Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington

Richard Brookhiser specializes in concise character studies of our founding fathers. He did a fine job with Alexander Hamilton which followed this very nice biography of George Washington. The book justly identifies George Washington as the central Founding Father and goes on to explain how his character was essential to holding the revolution together and the enduring example he set as our first President. The subtitle of the book is "rediscovering Washington". I like this approach a great deal because Washington is one of those names that everyone has an image of and thinks they know. However, when you probe that surface picture you begin to realize how little real knowledge and understanding is there. This book hits the important points of essential nature of Washington to our founding, his life, his character, and how he relates to our country today. The book is not exhaustive and there is much about Washington to search out after you have read this book. However, it is short enough for everyone to enjoy and yet offers enough depth of insight to satisfy those with prior knowledge of Washington. Fine job!

This is more a collection of essays following a thesis that Brookhiser lays out and follows. I liked the retelling of things I already knew, and really enjoyed the themes and bits that I didn't know already. Washington is in sore need of rediscovery and this book meets those challenges by keeping the chosen topics to the point and brief enough to finish.I would read this after reading a biography of Washington, as I can imagine a person with no knowledge of him may find the necessary jumping of time to follow the themes confusing.It's one of the top 3 books on Washington in it's readability.

If the purpose of a biography is to instruct us on the worthof his subject's life, Brookhiser's book is a grand slam. Hesavors his subject and brings us to realize that we should savorhim too. We owe Washington the man so much, all the more becausehis decisions and his type-castig were for the purpose of molding a country and trusting it to succeeding generations' hands. This is the best bio I have ever read. We understand the character andthe training behind what made him the indispensible and political-military everyman for our country's seminal period. The book isbeautifully organized and to the point. Every thought is carefullyput together and interwoven with the rest - not a word out of place. In a world where heroes seem difficult to accept withoutour poking holes in them, George Washington is the whole hero. Brookhiser's is a whole work.

Brookhiser has done two things here. First, he has contributed to our understanding of our first president, who for so many has become just a face on a quarter, or a hairdo on a one dollar bill. George Washington was so big, that his legacy can handle many more books. This book serves as an incisive thematic essay, grounded in the perspective of fathering, and fathering a whole country. The fact that Washington never fathered any of his own children makes this more interesting.Second, we have here a new, more serious Brookhiser, shown by his subsequent biography of Alexander Hamilton. Brookhiser cut his teeth writing for National Review, and wrote some incredibly perceptive essays on the Republican primary contestants in 1980. The good news is that he has deepened as a writer, and now shows that he can also research back in time.This book reads fast, but sinks deep. Buy it, read it.

I read this after reading Brookhiser's book on Alexander Hamilton, which I also enjoyed immensely. I do not find many books that I am uncritical about, but this is one of them. First, it must be understood, in light of other reviews, that Brookhiser disclaims up front that this is NOT a biography on George Washington. It does not go into detail about any portion of his life. Rather, it is a terrific examination of Washington's life contribution, and our historical understanding of it, from a particular perspective. As with Alexander Hamilton, Brookhiser isolates this perspective with incredible acumen, and then presents it to the reader with great eloquence and sparkling prose. While the first and second parts of the work are at times seemingly rambled and undirected, the patient reader will be rewarded in the end when this skillful author pulls all his points together and presents a wonderful close that fills you with a profound admiration, both for our own fathers and for the father of our country.