Modern opinion regards George Washington as a nonentity, a political figurehead of no real importance to the founding of the country. The stories of his early life and character popularized by Parson Weems–the little boy who could not tell a lie–are discounted as naive exaggerations suited to a time when Americans still thought our leaders should be better than the rest of us. His formal bearing and aloofness seem off-putting to an age that asks its leaders to experience "compassion" and to "feel our pain."
It is hard for modern readers to appreciate the reverence and awe with which Americans viewed Washington 100 years ago, and still harder to believe that this literally boundless admiration could have really been deserved. Now Richard Brookhiser, his generation's premier essayist and political writer, goes in search of the real George Washington. What he discovers, under layers of both 19th century piety and 20th century cynicism, is a figure who can still evoke our deepest admiration.
Far from a one-dimensional figurehead who pales beside his brilliant contemporaries Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, Washington emerges from this against-the-grain revisionist biography as a complex, highly intelligent, and audacious individual. Brookhiser surveys Washington's astonishing career as a soldier, founder, and statesman–a quarter century of leadership in battle, constitution-making, and politics that remains unmatched by any modern leader; he next examines Washington's education, character, and interest in ideas; and finally he explores what fatherhood meant to the childless, slave-owning aristocrat who was called in his own lifetime the father of his country. At a time when paternity, self-government, and the very idea of greatness are ignored or misunderstood, Founding Father recovers a figure who embodied all three–and challenges us to live up to the high standards that our founding father set for his political children.
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