Chernow comments how Stuart is the artist who painted the portrait adorning the one-dollar bills. Whether the portrait he paints here is the same, or if he painted more than one portrait of the man, this is not mentioned as of yet. Chernow seems to be exploring the man who Washington was, the man no one fully knew because of Washington's stoic nature to control his emotions, seldom losing his temper, which was - apparently - a vaunted experience to endure.
As I listen to this on audio book (read by Scott Brick, one of the best narrators in the business ) I am struck at how new such an approach as this is. I have found myself fortunate in reading several biographies of George Washington - all a treasure to revel in - but I doubt if I have encountered any effort where the man behind the legend is actually attempted. This promises, in its unabridged length (the only way to go), a treasure into who the father of our great country was.
November 24, 2010
Scott Brick is a very easy narrator to whom one can listen. His voice has a natural timbre to it that draws my attention. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about; he sounds like he is the actual writer of the book. I find my attention focused on every word.
That much being said, what are the words he is saying? George Washington emerged from a family lineage where the men died young (including his great-great grandfather who was involved in the English Civil War of Oliver Cromwell's day), his mother Mary Ball Washington was the first commanding "general" in his life, and the young George aspired to military dignity and greatness - though 'greatness' might be the wrong term for his aspirations. Though a certain pride is evident, there is never a lording himself over others with a 'greatness' that quells other people.
One interesting thing I learned in reading this early part of Washington's life is that he never wore the wigs that were common for people of his time. The white hair we familiarize ourselves with, it was his actual hair - powdered by him. I never knew as much.
November 26, 2010
Finished with Part 1. Massive, it is - simply massive, as it takes a life and recounts it with such finesse and detail, one feels as if one were living in the 1700s, a neighbor to the Washington's, knowing who the man was as he lived his life.
George Washington was not, in his youth, the same man we know of from his maturity, leading the Continental Army, the Constitutional Convention, and then finally the United States as the country's first president. There are indications of pride (tempered with the responsibility of a gentleman), ambition (he desired a commission in the military - only to be snubbed by the arrogance of a British military that looked down anything 'colonial'), and even angry temper which refused to acquiesce to such indignities.
It is a fascinating account to see the Father of the Country in such a human light; and seeing him as 'human', rather than a transcendent 'god-like' figure beyond flaw and judgment error. It opens his story to more growth and development, rather than to be born as General Washington.
The British probably could have avoided the entire revolution if they had only acknowledged, what was eventually acknowledged through the Continental Congress in appointing him commander over the Continental Army, this man was a born leader.
Instead, one event after the next continues to build in Washington's life, where his resentment of British intrusion and pomposity forces no other course except to accept a firm and resolute break. Fascinating.
I am surmising, though Chernow never states this explicitly as of yet, his marriage to Martha became the turning point in developing the statesman and composed man history has left us today. She seemed to be everything he was not, and thus she was everything he eventually needed. Fascinating.
December 27, 2010
Horsham Pennsylvania
It's been too long since I engaged myself in this tale. I might need to reacquaint myself by starting from the beginning - if the battery on the Playaway will hold. I recall the story as one biography on Washington that thoroughly examined who he was as a person. In doing so, he comes across as more thoroughly accessible as a person, rather than the godlike figure many other may portray the man. After visiting his home in Mount Vernon, and discovering how people still flock there to visit (as they did when he and Martha originally entertained two centuries ago), that reality compels me to not only conclude my listening to the book being read, but also to acquire a copy for myself.
January 15, 2011
Great Bend Kansas
As I continued to canvass the territory of George Washington's life expertly laid out within the pages of this truly treasured book, I covered what I believe was the 26th chapter in my listening of it today. When one listens to a book, rather than turn page after page in the old fashioned manner of yesteryear, sometimes chapters will blur one into the next. I reference this particular chapter simply for the unknown truth it presents of the, dare I say, "politics" of that day? Even during a war in which the patriots were not expected to win, where all would be mercilessly hanged - if not worse - for their treasonous acts against the British crown, could there still exist the petty bickering of politics we know with such utter regularity today?
Yes.
In this chapter, addressed in the form akin to 'throwing mud at a demi-god', the veneer of George Washington is tarnished by political opponents who begin to doubt his competence in leading the Continental Army. He has suffered from two humiliating defeats; General Horatio Gates has captured the army of British General John Burgoyne. Talk begins circulating with a virulence against the father of our country in a way one would swear was talk against a political opponent of today.
I was already aware of the fact George Washington faced the sting of arrows anyone in a governing capacity will. I knew of Horatio Gates, along with Charles Lee, desiring to supplant him as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. But the disparaging talk Ron Chernow reveals in this chapter was stunning. If hate-filled chatter against oneself is the mark of great leadership, it gives rise to the consideration that anyone of our own time and day, who suffers under such vitriol, and stands to press on a new day (as George Washington obviously did) if such a person is the next great American leader to forage the country into the new century.
February 25, 2011
| T |
he subject matter of this book is simple enough to discern. What a reader will discover within the pages of this book is elementary. Washington: A Life. The Life of George Washington. Surveyor of western territory in the disputed Ohio Valley. Lieutenant Colonel in the French-Indian War. Commander-in-Chief of the American Revolutionary Continental Army. President of the American Constitutional Convention. First President of the United States of America. Frontiersman. Farmer. Statesman. Father of the Country. There is no question as to what story the book holds once the cover is turned and the initial word engaged. The question to be answered is what makes this writing on the man different than all the litany of others where he is featured either in part or in whole.
First, the “explosion of research” made available to author Ron Chernow, enables all the array of colors necessary to paint a more true portrait of the man than, perhaps, has ever been attempted. Washington is placed upon history’s stage with all his strengths, as well as his weaknesses intact, showing one who is neither demi-god to worship, nor racist Southern slaveholder to disdain. Rather, he is a man, a great and good man, but nonetheless still a man, susceptible to all the frailties of humankind – and that reality of him being of the same human race as the rest of us, makes the great things he accomplished in his life that much more accessible to those of us today.
Secondly, Chernow accomplishes this feat by assuming the role of a trusted Washington aide, experiencing these events as they pass the general by, rather than any reporter dubiously attempting an accurate rendering from without and after the fact. There is an inner dialogue we become privy to, learning how Washington’s mind worked through the constant challenges thrown at him with a near unrelenting ‘life isn’t fair!’ rant. The desire to achieve, mixed with death on all corners, duty to one’s country, constant benevolence to family, friends, and even strangers create the formula for how the one man this country needed developed into the man we could not exist without.
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