First and Foremost

Whew, I’ve been busy, busy, busy with work and class and house. I’ve been finished with His Excellency for several days, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to write the review of the Joseph J. Ellis book. The first book I read by Ellis was Founding Bothers that I reviewed over a year ago. That one was a Pulitzer Prize winner. After reading this one I bought American Sphinx, a National book Award winner itself. As you can tell Ellis knows his stuff about this era of American history, and has a knack for turning it into a good book. I’ll ramble on about the book after the link.

This book has been sitting on my ever growing pile of “To Be Read” books for a while. A friend of mine actually managed to read it before me and write his own review. I’ve been interested in history for along time, and right now I seem to be in a US history phase. I might switch to Europe or Asia later.

Washington is interesting as a historic figure because his influence is so great and yet knowledge of the man himself is so limited. He falls into that category of People that are known for centuries by one name that everyone recognizes as this singular individual. Someone would ask me what I was reading and I would replay, “A biography of Washington.” They knew immediately who I was talking about. There are a limited number of people with that much staying power.

Ellis has this knack in books of turning historical figures into people. There have been trends with History’s greats first of building them up to near godhood and then tearing them down to nothingness. Ellis admits this in the book. He takes a different tack. He tries to reconstruct the person and the motivations and experience that lead them to the points and decisions on which most of history focuses. What you end up with is a previously enigmatic persona that dissolves in the light of realistic human wants and needs. It discards the common view of the inherent “goodness or rightness” of some of these individuals to show how very fallible and self motivated people could do such great things. In my view it’s infinitely better than the mythos that normally surrounds the founding of this country.

So don’t read this book if you like all the divine goodness talk about the Founding Fathers. Do read it if you want to see history as closer to real life. And do read it if you really want to see how amazing and necessary Washington was to the birth of this country. For a long time people forgot that half the beauty a portrait are the cracks, flakes, and other distress marks.