Customer Reviews

George Washington: The Founding Father (Eminent Lives)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
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This last weekend, viewers of a cable TV miniseries voted Ronald Reagan history's "Greatest American." George Washington finished fourth, behind the Gipper, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Whatever this may say about the Americans who participate in television phone-in polls, it certainly shows the esteem in which Washington continues to be held by the nation he did so much to create. Personally, I would argue that George Washington is the standard against which American greatness has to be judged. And similarly, this thin volume by Paul Johnson has set a standard against which future portraits of the man should be measured.

Washington's life was a monumental one, and so it naturally attracts monumental biographies -- from Freeman's seven volume work, Clark's two-volume All Cloudless Glory: the Life of George Washington or Joseph Ellis' recent and hefty His Excellency: George Washington. Summing up the man in barely 100 pages, as Johnson (himself no stranger to weighty tomes) has done, is a far more challenging, and necessarily more selective, undertaking. It would be easy to come up with a list of things Johnson "should have" included or "ought to have" covered in more depth. But within the confines of the Eminent Lives series, Johnson has done a magnificent job focusing on the essentials of the man and his impact on his world and ours.

Despite the brevity of the book, Washington comes through strongly as a flesh and blood man, not an ivory god. Far from the Olympian reserve Washington himself cultivated, Johnson shows how the man was clever, opinionated, sometimes self-seeking, sometimes hypocritical, and simultaneously revered and underestimated by those around him. I found the latter stages of the book especially interesting, as Johnson charted Washington's influence on the new government under the Constitution, and Washington's own efforts in promotion of a strong, centralized government. The American presidency, today and for some time the most powerful post in the world, is an office shaped for, indeed designed in the image of, George Washington. Johnson makes a case that the strong powers later exercised by presidents like Jackson and Lincoln were not usurpations, but rather honest interpretations of powers the Framers intended Washington to have.

In my experience, pocket-sized biographies like this series and the similar Penguin Lives series can vary greatly in quality from volume to volume. This is the first Eminent Lives edition I've read (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives) by Christopher Hitchens comes next), and the series is, for me, off to a wonderful start. Johnson has packed an awful lot into one slim book, and has put to shame many more verbose but less instructive views of the same subject. It won't take you long to read this, but it will more than repay the time.

This is one of several volumes in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series. Each offers a concise rather than comprehensive, much less definitive biography. However, just as Al Hirschfeld's illustrations of various celebrities capture their defining physical characteristics, the authors of books in this series focus on the defining influences and developments during the lives and careers of their respective subjects. In this instance, George Washington.

Johnson observes that "As the central actor in the American Revolution, George Washington was one of the most important figures in world history. As America's commander in chief throughout the eight-year struggle against Britain he effectively liberated the thirteen colonies from imperial rule. He then presided over the process whereby the new nation drafted, ratified, and enacted its Federal Constitution. Finally, for eight years he directed the administration that put the Constitution to work, with such success that, suitably updated and amended, it has lasted for nearly a quarter of a millennium."

That said, Johnson goes on to point out that Washington remains a remote and mysterious figure. "He puzzled those who knew and worked with him, and who often disagreed violently about his merits and abilities. He puzzles us. No man's mind is so hard to enter and dwell within. Everyone agreed, and agrees, he was a paragon. But a rich or empty one? A titan of flesh and blood or a clockwork figure programmed to do wisely?" Within only 123 pages, Johnson responds to these and other questions.

Of special interest to me is the interdependence of Washington's ambitions with those of the thirteen colonies which he led to military victory and then to constitutional federation. Throughout his adult life, Washington was driven by "the paramountcy of land" and his notion of "interest." He wanted to own, manage, and develop as much acreage as possible. This would increase his net worth, of course, but also establish for him important connections (i.e. through family ties, friendship, local ties, or clan) "which put a man ahead of his immediate competitors in getting something he wanted -- a place, a promotion, a contract, a favor." Although Washington had hoped to avoid it, he eventually realized that the separation of America from Britain served both his own and the colonies' best interests. "To Washington, the sealing of the open frontier to the west was the fundamental reason for resisting Britain, but was also symptomatic of the conflict of rights between colonial assemblies and Westminster." Hence the significance of the Stamp Act (1765) and then the Declaratory Act (1766).

I was also interested in what Johnson has to say about another aspect of Washington's multi-faceted personality. "It is true that he was a bit of an actor. He liked to play the Old Man card when needed. He did his little scenes, as when addressing officers at Newburgh, of fumbling for his glasses and repeating: `I have already grown grey in the service of my country -- now I am growing blind.' He also pretended to lose his temper. Jefferson, who was taken in, said he was `tremendous in his wrath.' If ever his character was impugned in cabinet he would `By God them,' saying `he would rather be on his farm than be made Emperor of the World, by God!'"

Washington owned as many as 300 slaves at one time but hated chattel slavery and when writing his will as death approached, he provided for the liberation of all of his slaves. He was passionately committed to the strict separation of church and state as specified by the First Amendment even as all "of his codes of morals, order, and propriety were rooted in Christianity, which he saw as the greatest civilizing force the world had ever known." Washington was by all accounts a patrician who, when he died, owned $530,000 in land and stock alone, making him one of the richest men in America. Nonetheless, he was determined to improve the standard of living and quality of life for those less fortunate. Hence the importance to him of "fast, extensive, cheap, safe, and reliable travel" by which to accelerate the settlement and development of the rich agricultural land he had once surveyed on the far side of the mountains, "and to work it with modern English farming methods." Washington was a devout believer in what was later characterized, in the 1840s, as Manifest Destiny.

I hope the provision of excerpts in this brief commentary will help those who read it to gain at least a sense of Johnson's crisp, concise, and eloquent discussion of someone who was indeed a paragon of paradox.

Paul Johnson is a British historian who admires the United States and wrote a lengthy history of the United States. Now, he has written a very short biography of George Washington. Mr. Johnson is clearly an admirer of his subject, particularly of his military record. In just 123 pages, Johnson covers Washington's entire career, from his days as a surveyer, to his early military career in the French and Indian war, to his Revolutionary War generalship, to his chairing the constitutional convention and to his presidency. Naturally, Johnson cannot go into much detail but he certainly provides a good overview.

An example of the inability to go into detail is the discussion of the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Among the issues were territory in North America and impressment of American sailors on the high seas. The treaty was very controversial and many in Congress felt that John Jay had sold out the United States in negotiating the treaty. Johnson feels that the treaty was a fair one but we never really understand the controversy since the brevity of the book prevents an in depth analysis.

The book also makes some interesting blanket statements. For example, prior to the French and Indian War, Washington was involved in a skirmish with the French which resulted in a number of deaths. Johnson credits Washington with having started the French and Indian War by virtue of this conflict. Perhaps due to the short length of the book, a little exageration helps make the point.

There was another short biography of Washington that was recently written by James MacGregor Burns and which is part of a series of short presidential biographies. Since that book is slightly longer and tends to concentrate a little more on washington's presidential years, issues are explored in a little more depth. Nonetheless, I give Johnson's effort 5 stars because it purports to be an overview. For waht it sets out to do, it does it well. Still, as in the Jay Treaty example, this overview cannot give the reader a full understanding of the issues.

In this 2005 work, British author and historian Paul Bede Johnson turns his attention to that preeminent among America's founding fathers, George Washington. This biography is, in spite of its brevity, an excellent work on the general. It gives an excellent look into his history, and an excellent analysis of what he did and why.

This book was written as part of the Eminent Lives series, which explains its shortness. And, in fact, its shortness its part of its excellence. There are times when you wish to read 400+ pages on someone, and enjoy the depth of understanding such a book gives you. But, there are times when you want a biography that is short and to the point, and this book is for those times. I really enjoyed this book, and think that it is an excellent biography of America's first president. I give it my highest recommendations!

This is the biography of George Washington I had been looking for for thirty years. It is a fine performance. The biography is dense with the multitude of facets of the man. It is a quick read. I inhaled the book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

In "George Washington: The Founding Father," the eminent British historian Paul Johnson supplements the level of outstanding scholarship found in his other great works (Modern Times, Napolean, Intellectuals)with a European view of this greatest American. Despite its brevity, this illuminating biography of George Washington places the great man as the prototypical late 18th century figure. In contrast with American biographers who tend to think of the American Revolution as a discrete beginning, Johnson shows the American Revolution to be both revolution and evolution resulting from the confluence of the Age of Reason, English tradition and values and the long independent history of the American colonies prior to King George.

For whatever reason, George Washington had never come "alive" for me. Sure: the leader of our troops during the Revolutionary War, our first President, "Father of our Country," and the man on the one-dollar bill.

But who exactly was he, and why was he so admired? This had eluded me, until I read Paul Johnson's superb short biography.

The short answer is that George Washington was a great man --- great in leadership and also pretty big physically. (De Tocqueville remarked that he had never seen a man with a larger pair of hands.) It is fairly accurate to say that, wherever he went, he dominated, mostly through his moral and ethical qualities. He did not desire political power, but he desired with all his soul and all his being a happy future for America and the American people. He was a genius, and he worked harder than most of us can imagine.

Here's one point that really impressed me: Washington's conduct of the Revolutionary War. Gore Vidal, in one of his "historical" novels, absolutely flays Washington alive as a nincompoop and a loser, a "general" who couldn't win a single battle. It is surprising (and educational) to learn from Paul Johnson that Washington was, on the contrary, a brilliant strategist. His strategy was simply to outlast the British by fighting a war of attrition. (Note well: this is something like the strategy employed by Ho Chi Minh against US!) He calculated, accurately, that within 4-5 years the British would tire of the "quagmire" and sue for "negotiations." Which happened, and the USA won the war in the negotiations. (Gore Vidal, of course, omits to mention the tiny detail of George Washington actually winning the war.)

Washington was an impressive man, on many different levels, and this book is a masterpiece at revealing the multiple facets of one of the greatest men America ever produced.

I must also say that I really appreciate a SHORT biography. I would never read seven volumes of anyone's life, and I am thoroughly fed up with the biographers who feel they must devote a thousand pages to the life of (say) LBJ. "Brevity is the soul of wit," gentlemen!

A very high recommendation! I will add, uselessly, that all Americans should read this book.

I enjoyed this biography of our first President. You read about General Washington's love for the land and his desire to care for it, but his skill as a strategist brought him into the French and Indian War, where he successfully defended against the French. After the war, Washington was disappointed in England's attempts to levy heavy taxes on the colonies without allowing them appropriate representation in Parliament. The Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and the Intolerable Acts led to war, and Washington felt patriotic pride in defending his country. He lost some tough battles (Long Island, New York), and endured some tough winters (New Jersey, Valley Forge), but his average tactical skills were overshadow by his great ability to strategize the big picture. it was his idea to move the troops south and block Lord Cornwallis on the peninsula, leading to his surrender and to American freedom. It was remarkable to see how well Washington could do with limited troops and funds and resources.

Washington would retire to his farm in Mt Vernon, even though there were frequent calls for him to be the leader of the country. Washington reluctantly agreed to be the nation's first leader if they could draft a constitution that would be agreeable to the states, which they did in 1789, and Washington became the first President of the United States. He supported the building of turnpikes, canals, and railroads, and the education of the young, and the forgiving of states' debts. He took a lot of heat from those who supported a more centralized government and from those who demanded more states' rights (Jefferson). He took a lot of heat, and on more than one occasion, Washington expressed his distaste for the Presidency.

His two biggest failures were not supporting a check and balance for the Judiciary and not manumitting the slaves. Once cotton became King of the South, it became almost impossible to convince the South to go along with it. But Washington did free his own slaves upon his death.

This is a good sketch of the first President's life, but you'll want to read a more substantial biography after whetting your appetite with this slender volume.

Over the years, I have read several volumes of Paul Johnson, and I have enjoyed his easy and readable style. He does not disappoint in his small volume on George Washington. The father of our country is revealed as a man of wisdom, great character and leadership. Johnson depicts Washington in a variety of roles--soldier, farmer, commander, leader of the Constitutional Convention, president, and entrepreneur.

Thanks to my education, I always had a better grasp on the intellectual founding of America. Figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams always stood out in my mind. The documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers had prominence. I never understood exactly what made Washington, in the words of some, "indispensable." Thanks to Johnson, I understand.

Although Johnson does not neglect the negative, the author is not a dispassionate chronicler of facts. He has strong opinions, and he uses the narrative to make his points. Washington is clearly the hero of the story. Alexander Hamilton also shines. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson appears much smaller than his soaring rhetoric. The book only fails when it lapses at occasional editorials. For example, when Johnson describes the modern problem of judicial activism, he writes, "If Washington had been aware of the possibilities of judge-made law he would have recoiled in horror" (pg 113). No matter the merit of Johnson's position, he is clearly putting thoughts into Washington's head. The volume would have been much better by avoiding such speculation.

Nonetheless, I heartily recommend the book.

I flew through this book and found it interesting but at only 144 pages I am not sure the $16 plus price tag is worth it. What is the justification for this when other books on the same subject matter with double the information can be had for the same price or just little higher? I would recommend reading this book if you get it for between $5 and $10. Again I liked the book but don't feel the price is worth it.