George Washington: A Life

First biography I have read of Washington; I was surprised by how little I knew of perhaps the most important U.S. citizen of them all. The book was very exciting to me for its in-depth research and revelations about the details of Washington's personal and intimate life as well as his public activities that are perhaps better known. I think this book could be the harbinger of a renaissance of interest in Washington, the French and Indian War, and the Revolution. I am not a professional historian, but I believe this is a clear-eyed look at Washington as a fleshed out individual with faults and weaknesses to go along with his unparalleled achievements. Here is presented a real-life hero, but not a mythologized one. The family life, the economy of the day, his businessman activities, the relationship with Sally Fairfax and Martha Dandridge Custis, his military and political life--all are treated with clear-headed facts that nonetheless make evaluations that leave one hungry to know the man even better and read other historians' opinions. The style is attractive, the writing flows with minor glitches, and it whets the appetite to read more history of the entire epoch, and not just the war years.

I loved this book. First of all, it taught me so much more of Washington, the man. He was certainly always a great patriot, even returning to the call of duty after all he really wanted to do was retire to his beloved Mount Vernon. Secondly, the book cleared up some of the battles Washington participated in during the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution. He remained humble and thoroughly kept his same convictions all through his life. If you want to know why this man was called The Father of His Country, read this book. It was not just because he was the first president. Now why I did not give it the fifth star has nothing to do with the written material of the book itself, but the terrible way it has been transcribed for e-readers. Periods and commas and capital letters where they don't belong; names spelled two different ways. It constantly trips you up and makes for difficult reading.

While growing up I had visions of who our first president was: the picture in the classroom, never telling a lie, leading the revolution, crossing the Deleware, etc. This book fills in the details and shows Washington to be a very human man - certainly with faults (with many mistakes) - but a man with integrity, honor and a determinition to win that impressed and pleased his contemporaries. A very detailed book and well worth reading.

This is an excellent, detailed, insightful book about the life of George Washington. However, it is obvious that it was converted to digital form through an optical character reading (OCR) process that was not cleaned up properly afterwards, leaving huge errors which made reading and deciphering the meaning of sentences very difficult. Most were just annoying, such as the missing "s" at the end of each plural "Washingtons", which caused confusion as to whether the author was referring to the couple or to the man himself. Periods and other punctuation would appear randomly in sentences altering their meaning. Only careful backtracking and parsing of the apparent fragments revealed the intent of the phrase in question. Then there were other completely confusing details such as the year "17%" and an "814 x 6% piece of paper", where the reader was left to make their best guess. My conclusion for the latter was an 8"x 6" piece of paper, and year 1799 for the former.Yet despite the multitude of grammatical trip hazards, the book is well research and cited. If the editors responsible for the book would actually read it and correct the myriad of OCR conversion errors (the errors increase prolifically as the book proceeds forward), it would receive a 5 star rating from me. As-is... Just three stars.

I loved this book. The author did his research and told his story in a factual yet spellbinding way. I have read about Washington and taught his story in American History classes, yet I found so much that I did not know. I have recommended this book to my book club, Sunday School Class, and many friends.

The scholarship of the work was truly excellent. Randall draws from the writings of the participants in the biography (especially Washington's). He claims Washington was not a Christian, because he stopped taking communion. I was open to that argument, but he never qualified it and then seemed to contradict it often with the circumstances of Washington's life (vestry in his church, church every Sunday, contributing to build a church, etc..)He also mentions that Washington was really into Masonry briefly in this book. (About two sentences in the entire book). I understand that this is an assumption of many because he did join a lodge, but I would have liked a little more evidence in this regard as well.At times, the author repeats himself. This caused me to wonder if I was in the correct place in the book.Now that I have the issues why I did not give it 5 stars, let me talk about the positives. He demonstrates how his relationship with his mother and his heritage formed in Washington many of the attributes that we regard positively today. He also does an excellent job of humanizing the mythical Washington. There were times when I was supremely disappointed in Washington, but that should be the case, if Washington has faults like any human being does. I loved how the author gave the details of so many issues and then gave an overall summary that was completely supported by the facts.One last complaint. I would have liked a summary at the end of the book, like the one he gave for how Washington took into consideration men's motives in order to get the most out of the Revolution. The book ends a little abruptly.I would highly recommend the book!