33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Splendid Book About a Little Known Person, July 18, 2005
This review is from: Martha Washington: An American Life (Hardcover)
The first thing that struck me when I saw this book was the image on the dust jacket. It shows a young, attractive, stately, elegant lady. And when I saw the title was Martha Washington I had to realize that I had always thought of her as old, the First Mother of the country so to speak.
Of course Martha Washington wasn't always old. She married when she was 18 and had two children by her first husband. She was also wealthy, strong-minded, and seems to have had a delightful, intelligent personality.
After she married George Washington, she was for forty one years her husband's beloved partner and the mainstay of his stressful life. She set the standard for how first ladies should act in trying to balance the public and private parts of her life. As George set the image for the Presidency, Martha created the rule of the First Lady.
This is one of the most interesting biographies in recent years. It is extensively researched and well written, but it also covers a subject that has gotten inadequate attention from biographers down through the years.
The picture on the cover -- It is new. The LSU forensics lab took a later portrait, computer age regressed it to 25 years, and gave this image to Michael Deas who then painted the portrait. The painting is now at Mount Vernon.
Splendid Book!
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just a dowdy little old lady, February 7, 2006
This review is from: Martha Washington: An American Life (Hardcover)
To me Martha Washington conjures up the vision of a little white-haired, plump elderly lady dressed in modest attire with a "dishtowel" on her head. Ms Brady's biography of the first First Lady, the "mother" of our country as her husband was the "father" of it, dispels this dowdy image.
Most of us with a modest grade school education in American history know of the panoply of male Revolutionary War heroes. Most of us have heard of Martha Washington, some know that George was her second husband, but beyond that she has little individual character and remains for most of us a shadowy figure in the background. As Ms Brady reveals this was not the case during the colonial period when her name was well known and honored, even revered.
Although the author admits that very little primary material is remaining from the period, this due to the fact that the lady destroyed her correspondence with her husband before her death, she mines what there is from secondary sources such as letters and documents in the possession of others describing her, her relationship with her family and her illustrious spouse, and her role in the Revolution itself. The book is a proper history of the period, in that it does not often describe imagined scenes or put words into the mouth of the heroine unless the information is documented. Where nothing is known specifically about a situation, like the marriage ceremonies, the author refers to what was most commonly done at the time, placing the lady in the context of her time. The information fills in what is most frequently neglected in many histories, namely the human detail that brings events of the past so much to life. Most importantly, the author herself points out that so much has changed since the era, that even the sights, sounds, and smells of the period would be different. In fact, there is only so much of Martha's life that we can access.
Martha Washington: An American Life starts with the First Lady's life from her childhood, spent in a comparative wilderness--by our standards--among a large family of siblings. Like many people of the time, Martha's brothers' and sisters' lives were often shortened through stillbirth, post-natal death and childhood diseases. By the end of the book, she is the only child of her generation still living, and she has outlived her own children, two husbands, many of her nieces and nephews, and some of her own grandchildren. It is very evident throughout the biography that life is nothing that can be taken for granted at any age by any level of society; there is never a time when one is "out of danger." This alone must have had a major effect on how people perceived events and on how they chose to lead their lives.
One of the more interesting characteristics of the woman's life was her independence and self-confidence. Left a wealthy widow at the death of her first husband, she might easily have chosen to remain so. In fact few women except those who were widows of independent means had anything like the freedom that modern women enjoy. During the period just after her husband's death, she demonstrated her abundant talent for management by maintaining the commercial relationships with London tobacco dealers, making it understood that she could and would change agents if she was not satisfied. That she chose to marry again and chose George Washingon over a vastly more wealthy competitor for her hand suggests that she was a keen judge of character. That she knew he was emotionally attached to a married woman and still married him, suggests that she also had a keen understanding of her own value as a person and a woman.
While her early marriage to Washington is interesting for its insight into the character of married life, married life with the founder of the nation, and life on a plantation at the time, it is really with the war years and their later life that her value becomes abundantly apparent. Her support and the psychological environment that she created around herself, her husband, and everyone that shared their household contributed immeasurably to the success of the revolutionary campaigns. Washington is known to have said that he could win the war so long as he didn't outright lose it, and in that statement is captured the strategy that ultimately won it for the colonists. So long as there were no disastrous defeats, a war of attrition conducted over such a distance from England was likely to win, but that was a lengthy road, one that was often discouraging. Martha's frequent presence during winter camp, when the depression, defeatism, and want were most likely to set in did much to reverse negative trends, replacing them with an invaluable sense of commitment and comradery. Her presence definitely seems to have been of major importance to her husband, who seems to have born much of the stress of military life in silence. To Martha alone he seems to have been able to verbalize his personal concerns about the war effort.
One of the issues that most intrigues the reader is that Martha Washington, a freedom fighter of sorts herself, still believed in the institution of slavery even though her husband did not (he freed his own slaves at his death). When some of their slaves escaped to northern states where slavery was not legal, she was stunned and hurt that the individuals should prefer their freedom to life in the Washington household where they were very well treated. This suggests a "place for everything, and everything in its place" mentality not uncommon in the south from which both she and her husband came. It also illuminates the issues that the country chose to neglect in its efforts to establish itself on a firm, legal foundation, and foreshadowed the ultimate resolution almost a hundred years later by the Civil War generation, many of whom were descendants of Revolutionary War heroes themselves.
A very interesting book, one that should probably be read along with others like it by those studying American history in high school.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Painless and Enjoyable History Lesson, August 14, 2005
This review is from: Martha Washington: An American Life (Hardcover)
Though an avid reader, I am unlikely to pick up a biography or a bit of history as my first choice when looking for a new book. Recently, I was given a copy of Martha Washington-An American Life as a gift. Of first interest was the beautiful cover, and when I learned the story of the age regression leading to the painting of a portrait used for the cover design I was fascinated.
Once I began reading, I was hooked by the fascinating and well-told tale not only of our first First Lady but of the life style during the birth of our nation. This was the most entertaining and painless history lesson I have ever encountered, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Deciding that the book was interesting enough to share with others, I have purchased several copies to give as gifts next Christmas. This is a book that should be required reading for students of American history and anyone interested in learning more about the beginning of our great nation.
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