His Excellency : George Washington

Rating:
Summary: A FIERCE AND DISCIPLINED MAN
Review: Every American (well almost every American) knows who George Washington was. But what do you really know about our first President? He is more an icon and a saint than a real person in the minds of most of us. So, along comes HIS EXCELLENCY GEORGE WASHINGTON by pulitzer prize-winning Joseph Ellis to inform us about the man. Or about the man's career. This brief biography (275 pages not counting notes) is not a military history or a study of the times or even a personal account of George Washington. Rather it is more the story of his purpose-driven life in the real world. Did you know, for example, that George Washington was a very asute businessman and died one of the richest men in America? He was able to defer gratification for greater rewards in all aspects of his life - love, war, politics, business - and, as such, is perhaps our greatest example of the benefits of such practice, not only to him but to his newly born nation. Mr. Ellis gives us a very readable and entertaining biography. He dedicates HIS EXCELLENCY to W.W. Abbot, his former professor at William and Mary, who was the founding editor of the modern edition of THE PAPERS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON on which Mr. Ellis drew much of the basis for this biography. Washington was a strong man. Gilbert Stuart's portrait on the dust jacket reflects what the artist saw in Washington: "Had he been born in the forests, he would have been the fiercest man among the savage tribes."

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing Look at America's First Hero
Review: Everyone knows about George Washington. Father of his country, wooden teeth, couldn't tell a lie...the list goes go and on. Much of the list is inaccurate, though, and most of the rest misunderstood. Joseph Ellis has done a fine job of setting some of that to rights.

"His Excellency" sets out to examine what Washington was like as a person, and while it necessarily cannot completely succeed, it does an admirable job of helping the modern reader grasp what went into America's most essential citizen. Ellis takes the reader through Washington's life with an assessment at each turn of how certain events effected or were effected by Washington's personality. The portrait which emerges is far more interesting than the stereotypical lore most Americans are familiar with, and the reader is likely to come away from "His Excellency" with greater respect for Washington as he truly was than one could ever respect a mere icon.

Ellis possesses an enviable flair for prose, making several hundred pages fly by. Washington's life becomes an intriguing story under Ellis's care, almost reading like a novel rather than history. More historians should write so cleanly.

"His Excellency" should be high on the reading list of anyone seeking a better understanding of just how precarious America's emergence from thirteen colonies was, and just how important one man was to our eventual success.

Rating:
Summary: George Washington drafted by Yankees
Review: I read with great interest and enjoyment Mr. Ellis's book on our first president, but I was dumbfounded by the replacement of Parson Weems' delightful fable of Washington pitching a quarter across the Potomac with another, not equal, but just as preposterous one: George Washington threw a rock over the 210 ft. high Natural Bridge of Virginia. Let me put it this way (I'm not a physicist but a dad who has coached his son to pitch a baseball)if George was my son I would take him out of school, give up my practice of medicine, and devote my time to get him the largest contract ever seen for a major league prospect. Think of it. It would blow the scouts away. I would have a kid who could throw a rock 260 feet in the air and the rock would land 520 feet from where he stood when it landed. Success of the throw depends on several conditions. The rock would have to be thrown at a 45 degree angle, the rock would have to be heavy enough to have essentially no wind resistance, and there would have to be no trees on the bridge in the way. At a different throwing angle it would require more throwing power, as the rock would have to be thrown either higher or longer. Remember the bridge is 215 feet high, but it is also 90 feet wide and the rock has to clear the other side of the bridge.

Rating:
Summary: A real look at someone we thought we knew
Review: I was a little wary about reading His Excellency since, Will in the World, the last biography that I read because of it's `buzz' turned out to be a little over speculatively and disappointing but things turned out great! His Excellency turned out to be a refreshingly new look at a character who's image we are all familiar with.

The highest praise I can give this book is that it comes off as having an unflinching commitment to reality. Any book on a formative American political figure like Washington has the potential of being turned into a firework filled piece of propaganda but such is not the case here. Because of that realism Washington does not always come off as the best person in the world- in fact much of the time his seeming arrogance got on my nerves. Far from being a flaw though but by not deifying him Joseph J. Ellis really lets Washington's better moments shine. Never did I think more of Washington than when he gave up control of the continental army at the end of the revolutionary war despite the fears that he would seek to retain that military power for himself.

Washington was certainly not perfect but this book makes him real- a great read!

Rating:
Summary: A Pleasant Surprise
Review: In general, I tend to avoid biographies, and the older the person, the more I avoid it. But I decided to take a chance with this one, mainly because of the good reviews below. Man, am I glad I did. This book is, in a word, excellent.

Like most kids growing up in American, I knew OF Washington, but did not really KNOW Washington. Mr. Ellis's book does a really nice job of revealing Washington's character, warts and all. I also appreciated the fact that he did not shy away from traits or events that are not the most flattering to the man's lasting legacy (i.e. the delay until his death of the emancipation of his slaves). Historical whitewashes are not beneficial to anyone, and this is certainly not a historical whitewash.

The other aspect that I really enjoyed about the book was its readability. It is as though Mr. Ellis is in the room talking with you. The style and syntax flows very evenly. I am a fan of this type of writing because, though I have a higher education, I don't always like to use it when reading for leisure.

In the end, I was left wanting more information about Washington, especially about some of his pet projects that were not complete at his death (Washington DC, a military academy, etc.). However, this is not a criticism of the book, rather a complement to it since it gave me a hunger for more information. The book deftly accomplishes the author's aim which is a revelation of the character of Washington. While more information would have been interesting, it would have been a much longer (and not as readable) book. In summary, I would give it six stars if I could.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Joseph J. Ellis' biography of George Washington, His Excellency, is, well, excellent. I must admit that I don't normally enjoy biography, but after reading Washington's Crossing earlier this year, I felt compelled to pick up this one. The book examines Washington's life, sometimes in minute detail, and gives us a portrait of a man who was neither a complete saint nor a complete sinner. This is Washington, the human, although, the fact that he survived the Revolutionary War seems almost superhuman, something Ellis has some fun with. The book portrays Washington as a man who grew and matured as time went on. In the years before the Revolutionary War, he wasn't the most likeable person, but something happened to him along the way that made him certainly worthy of the greatness ascribed to him. He was not without his faults--two issues he should have addressed during his presidency, slavery and Native Americans are dealt with head on in this book. In the end, though, the book concludes that he is a man who did much more to benefit the nation than to harm it. His Excellency is a terrific biography, one which brings life to the man on your dollar bill.

Rating:
Summary: George Washington the man, not the myth
Review: Most biographies of our Founding Fathers fall into one of two catagories: hagiographies or hatchet jobs. Happily, this book falls into neither catagory, but steers a middle line when discussing the life of our first president. The reader receives both the good and the bad of Washington's life, not that there is a lot of "bad" to go around. In a relatively short book, as this one is, it is not possible to go into all the many twists and turns of a famous life, and inevitably some things are left out of the writing. For instance, the discussion of Washington's two terms as president is rather skimpy, but to go into a lot of detail about incidents both domestic and foreign would, at least, double the length of the book. This work concentrates rahter exclusively on Washington the man, his life and actions, and delves into, as far as is possible at this time distance, his reasons for doing many of the things he did. It's very well written, and even the reader with no background in that period of American hitory will find it extremely informative.

Rating:
Summary: Fine but flawed
Review: Positive: This well-written, easy to read, even entertaining book helps penetrate the marble facade of Washington and also provides a good overview of the challenges of the Revolution.
Negative: Ellis's admirable preference for original research means that he includes little that isn't present in Washington's papers. For example, Martha is barely mentioned, even though she took up camp with Washington throughout the Revolution, presumably because she destroyed her correspondence. Ellis would have done well to have gone a bit further out on a limb to round out his portrait. In the one area he did (his discussion of Washington's attitudes about slavery), the result is illuminating.

Rating:
Summary: A superb one-volume biography of George Washington
Review: The two foremost biographies of George Washington have long been Douglas Southall Freeman and James Thomas Flexner's multi-volume ones. Both of these have been abridged into one-volume editions. While their full-length biographies are difficult and pricey to obtain, the one-volume editions are inexpensive and easily obtained. Ellis's stated purpose on this biography is to provide a one-volume modern edition that can serve as an alternative to both Freeman and Flexner. He does not attempt to approach the epic scope of the original version of either of their biographies, but he does an admirable job of providing a contemporary account of the life of this most remarkable of Americans.

Unlike his biographies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Ellis's biography of Washington provides a chronological narrative instead of a series of character sketches. In those other two books, Ellis was more concerned with analyzing the personalities of the individuals concerned than with an accounting of all or even most of the principle events in their lives. This is a much more straightforward narrative, though even here Ellis is more concerned with the light events through upon the character and make up of Washington the individual than illucidating the role of Washington as an actor in history. This is actually Ellis's strength as a writer: making his subjects emerge as believable individuals instead of hovering as inhumane statues. As a result, Ellis attempts to reveal Washington warts and all, and I have to say that while he does engage in some debunking of the myth of Washington, he makes him all that much more impressive for his actual achievements.

Ellis's Washington is a man who is deeply sensitive about how he is viewed and perceived by the rest of the world, as well as someone who is determined not to be taken advantage of economically. This sensitivity, Ellis shows, motivates much of what he did whether as plantation owner, patriot, general, and president. And also as slaveowner. If this Washington is less idealistic than the Washington of myth, he also seems more plausible. Ellis also does a marvelous job of teasing out Washington's political beliefs, which all in all are much less far reaching than one might suppose. Above all, Washington believed in a strong central government, though for reasons that put him somewhat out of step with his contemporaries. Adams and other Federalists believed in the need for a strong central government partly out of the need for a strong federal to protect against irrational forces in society, whether these are generated by ill-informed masses or by economic elites. Washington seemed to sense the need for a strong federal simply because if the inevitability of the nation becoming one. He seemed instinctively to be suspecious of local and state interests. What is remarkable about Washington's convictions was his willingness to be out of step with his fellow Virginians and his belief in a strong federal decades before improved travel would make the physical unification of the nation more feasible. But Ellis also brings out how very little Washington thought about political theory as a whole. Nonetheless, his instincts were remarkable.

Above all, one admires Washington for the power he refused to assume more than for what he did with the power that he possessed. In all that I have ever read on Washington--and Ellis's fine book brings this out better than most--he emerges as an extraordinarily remarkable man for his remarkable discipline in keeping the presidency from becoming a version of kingship. This is often remarked on, but it never ceases to impress when given the complete context of his life and the actual as well as potential power that he possessed. No president in American history had as much potential power as Washington. Absolutely no other president in American history grasped so little of what lay at hand. Most presidents want not less, but more power. Washington had as much as he wanted, and yet took so very little. To this day I wonder if we truly appreciate the enormity of his achievement, especially at a time when we have a president who has jokingingly (or is he truly joking?) that it would nice to be a dictator and not have to worry about the popular will or congress.

Ellis's biography does not supplant either of the full length biographies of Freeman or Flexner, but it does lay claim to be the finest single volume biography of the past few decades. I strongly recommend it to anyone seeking a biography of Washington, as well as to those who have enjoyed Ellis's other excellent books.

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT!!!
Review: Washington may be the least understood of our major founding fathers. Most people think of him as a god who could do no wrong. Some modern day academics seem on a mission to tear him off the pedastel.

Ellis, however, has set about giving his readers a thoughtful, balanced and readable view of who Washington was, what he accomplished, how he did it and how he thought. As a result, readers meet a Washington who, while not the greatest military strategist and not the greatest intellect, did have the charisma, the ambition, the personality and the intelligence to merit his position in history. He was a self made man who consciously married well, achieved military success against long odds, chaired the Constitutional Convention and pioneered the newly established role of President of the United States.

Contrary to the Parson Weems characterization, Washington was not perfect. He was a man with human faults including a tremendous temper and strong ambition. He struggled with the issue of slavery, and, like Jefferson, Adams and others, he was very concerned with how history would view him.

Washington was a realist who understood how people and nations behave. He understood the need for a strong central government. He understood when to fight and when to compromise. He knew how to identify talent and how to delegate.

In the final analysis, Washington was exactly what the Nation needed and he was willing to gift his many talents to it. He truly earned his place in history, and all Americans should be grateful that he was there.