His Excellency: George Washington - Tapa dura

"Mr. Ellis gives us a succinct character study while drawing on his extensive knowledge of Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary history to strip away the accretions of myth and contemporary extemporizing that have grown up around his subject. ... Mr. Ellis refuses to judge Washington by "our own superior standards of political and racial justice" but instead tries to show how Washington was seen in his day. In doing so he gives us a visceral understanding of the era in which the first President came of age, and he shows how Washington's thinking (about the war for independence, the shape of the infant nation and the emerging role of the federal government) was shaped by his own experiences as a young soldier in the French and Indian War and as a member of the Virginia planter class. The resulting book yields an incisive portrait of the man, not the marble statue. . . His Excellency is a lucid, often shrewd take on the man Mr. Ellis calls the "primus inter pares, the Foundingest Father of them all." And it does so with admirable grace and wit." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Ellis [writes] with clarity and grace. He has a gift for reaching a broad public with substantive books on serious subjects. In [His Excellency], he has done it again. This is an important and challenging work: beautifully written, lively, serious, and engaging... He has given us a book that will inspire other research, it will deepen our understanding of its subject." --David Hackett Fischer, Boston Sunday Globe

"[Ellis's] probing biographies remain some of the most psychologically penetrating portraits of the Founding Fathers that we have. [His Excellency] is full of subtle inroads into the man Ellis calls the "most notorious model of self-control in all of American history, the original marble man."-Richard Lacayo, Time

"Ellis skillfully uncomplicates many convoluted subjects, including the real and passionate Washington and the myths constructed around him, the economic and social forces driving him and his fellow revolutionaries.... A distinguished addition." --Celia McGee, Daily News

A landmark biography of America's first president draws on the Washington papers from archives at the University of Virginia to follow George Washington from his military career through his presidential years, discussing his personal life, marriage, struggle to keep an emerging America united, attitude toward slavery, and other accomplishments. 500,000 first printing. First serial, American Heritage.