George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol

Schwartz presents a verbose but imaginative look at the life and times of George Washington. The book seemed to be a meditation on a single theme - George Washington was a human being with human frailties, misfortunes, and maladies. However, it is these weaknesses, according to the vibrant virtous verbiage(this is style in which Scwartz seems to sporadically specialize)of the author, that resulted in the "cult" of Washington. Schwartz alludes to Washington's Revolutionary War loss at Philadelphia, his military indecisiveness and his self-induced lameducketry during his second term as proof of his humanity. I was pleasently suprised to read about these qualities or in Washington's case, the lack thereof. Unfortunaely, Professor Schwartz assumes that the reader has rabies, because he injects us with 17 examples on the same theme. What of his problems with L'Enfant, his relationship with Martha, his relationship with his father, his children(did he have any?), his relationship with politicians other than John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin? In sum, Schartz provides the reader with a brilliant synopses of as to how Washington's military failures made him more human and thus, a better man. The scinece-fictionesque conclusion is atypical of a biography, but this is an atypical biography, so it fits quite will. However, Schwartz is a sociologist, not a historian, and he attempts to overcompensate for this fact. Instead of producing a sociological study of a man whose life is often portrayed as if he were a Super Bowl halftime show, Schartz has fallen into the quagmire of over-analyzing his military misadventures, a boring road that this reader has travelled down many times before as an amateur historian. Still, this is an entertaining read, one I will recommend to others with just caution.