3.0 /5.0
When reading history I appreciate the approach the editor Stephen Mansfield is taking with this series. To paraphrase him: enough with the hagiographies, enough going to the other extreme and deconstructing and debasing all our ancestors. I like to see as many sides of the story as possible and make up my own mind. It seems Mansfield and his authors are trying to appeal to that idea with The Generals.
Vickery did a great job explaining the world of Washington's youth. The reading is a little drier after he gets into Washington's military life. He fleshes out a detail here and there, but mainly sticks to a writing style that resembles battle reporting. Little is included about Washington's presidential terms. Leaving out the commander-in-chief years leaves this one a pretty short read.
Like the rest of Washington's biographers, Vickery had less to work with than if he was writing about another founding father. For example, the Adams family library takes up stacks and stacks at the Massachusetts Historical Society's library. After George Washington's death, though, his wife burned all of his personal correspondence.
The legacy left of George Washington by this book is an American man we would recognize; full of ambition, adventure and sometimes arrogance. Unfortunately, the piety, civility and honor that tempered him in the eighteenth century would probably keep him out of leadership altogether in the twenty-first.
*I received a copy of the book for review from the publisher. I had to write a review - good, bad, or ugly. You can do the same at booksneeze.com.*
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