george washington biography audiobook

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George Washington: A Biography of an American President

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George Washington: A Biography Audiobook

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This extraordinary one-volume biography vividly portrays the unbreakable link between George Washington and the nation he helped create, defend, and govern. It begins in 1754, when Washington, beginning his military career with the Virginia Regiment, makes the decision to fire the opening shots of war between England and France. Carrying through the darkest winter of the American Revolution, he demands total victory and yields to nothing less. George Washington unified a new country torn by turmoil and would earn the love and respect of his soldiers, his countrymen, and his peers. Rich anecdotes and fascinating historical documents reveal Washington's critical role in the birth of our nation.

Alden provides an interesting and well-balanced single volume biography that exemplifies Washington's greatness by highlighting the wisdom and devotion he demonstrated while helping to form this nation.

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"I downloaded the audiobook from my local library. The narration is done by Grover Gardner, who is one of the very best. Very enjoyable listen." — Scott (4 out of 5 stars)

“Alden has drawn on his extensive knowledge of the era to produce a straight forward, anecdotal, often lively account of Washington and his times.”

“The best single-volume biography of Washington ever written…[Alden] is judicious in his judgment, balanced in his presentation, and always interesting in his portrayal…Essential.”

“A biography that has a lot in common with its subject—great authority, appealing restraint, unswerving moderation...Alden has a dozen-odd books on the Revolutionary period to his credit, and this is surely one of his best.”

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" Got bored. Stopped mid way. "

" In general, a good biography. But it's a little outdated in places. "

About John R. Alden

John R. Alden  (1908–1991) was a Duke University professor, an authority on the American Revolution, and an established historian. In addition to authoring eleven books, he was awarded the Beveridge Prize of American Historical Association in 1945 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly , and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.

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George Washington, Volume 1

• Young Washington

By: Douglas Southall Freeman

• Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
• Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
• 4.7 out of 5 stars 4.7 (43 ratings)

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R. E. Lee: Volume One

• Length: 23 hrs and 35 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 94
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 85
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 85

R. E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman was the recipient of the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It was a richly deserved honor, for Freeman's biography of the distinguished Virginian went on to become one of the most celebrated of all American biographies, a favorite of General George Marshall and President Dwight Eisenhower, among many others. Since his death, thousands of American soldiers have sought to emulate Lee's example of virtue, courage, and duty.

• 4 out of 5 stars

From The First Day To Just Before The Seven Days

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Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our 16th president.

A moving tale of a very human man

• By Sohachi on 06-25-16

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In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. This crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

• 5 out of 5 stars

A sad day when my book was done!

• By ButterLegume on 12-13-10

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This is the first book-length, critical analysis of Lieutenant General James Longstreet's actions at the Battle of Gettysburg. The author argues that Longstreet's record has been discredited unfairly, beginning with character assassination by his contemporaries after the war and, persistently, by historians in the decades since. By closely studying the three-day battle, and conducting an incisive historiographical inquiry into Longstreet's treatment by scholars, this book presents an alternative view of Longstreet as an effective military leader.

Longstreet Vindicated

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• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 14,615
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In this stirring audiobook, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

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Excellent Book (BUT WHERE IS THE PDF FILES)????

• By Amazon Customer on 10-25-17

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• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,281
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details

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Masterpiece - Best Audiobook I’ve Listened To

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A Hard Review to Write

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• 3 out of 5 stars

Basically a collection of sermons

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This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.

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You better know the events before listening

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Not for listening.

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Perfection.

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To Rescue the Constitution

• George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment

By: Bret Baier

• Narrated by: Bret Baier
• Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 126
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 107
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 107

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Never disappointed in the historical accounts of our countries accounts.

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• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,085
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• Story 5 out of 5 stars 7,245

McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. This is history on a grand scale, an audiobook about politics, war, and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship, and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, it is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

An outstanding biography

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Publisher's summary

George Washington, a Biography by Douglas Southall Freeman was the second great historical masterpiece by him to win the Pulitzer Prize, awarded posthumously in 1958. Freeman completed six volumes of this magnificent biography, but died before finishing the seventh and final volume, concluded for him by his research associates in 1957.

In Volume One, Young Washington , we follow the development of George from childhood to young manhood. It is an extraordinary tale of youthful vigor and determination. Washington’s father, Augustine, died in 1743 when George was only 11. He inherited 5,000 acres from his father along with 10 slaves. His older half-brother, Laurence, inherited the Hunting Creek estate, renaming it Mt. Vernon in honor of a British general he had served under some years earlier.

George soon proved himself an excellent mathematician and took up the study of land surveying as an apprentice under the watch of a local surveyor, which offered good pay. He excelled in this occupation and was soon exploring wilderness areas in northern Virginia under the patronage of William Fairfax, at the time one of the wealthiest men in the colonies. When trouble with the neighboring French to the north began, Washington was sent to deliver official correspondence by the Virginia governor, Dinwiddie. It proved to be a fateful step. As the situation moved toward open conflict, George, at the age of 22, was commissioned a Lt. Colonel of colonial militia and given command over several hundred soldiers. The great adventure of his life was about to commence.

• Series: George Washington Series , Book 1
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Critic reviews

"Freeman's treatment of Washington as a Commander in Chief is virtually definitive." ( The New York Times Book Review )

"For the popular, novelized biography, full of glib insights into the inner man, Freeman has nothing but contempt. His dogged intent is to portray Washington day by day and year by year, through each new experience, as if nothing were known and nothing were certain about his future." ( Time Magazine)

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George Washington, Volume 2

• Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 32
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 29
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 29

Volume Two opens in late 1754. Having resigned his commission in the Virginia militia, Washington pondered his future as a soldier. But by the spring of 1755, he had been made aide de camp to British general Edward Braddock. It was to prove a fateful event. Washington accompanied Braddock on his disastrous expedition to capture Fort DuQuesne (Pittsburgh), but the small army was ambushed and Braddock killed. Young Washington distinguished himself in the hopeless battle and subsequent retreat.

Forging an American Icon

• By James T. Bryson on 08-03-24

George Washington

• The Wonder of the Age

By: John Rhodehamel

• Narrated by: Joe Barrett
• Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 80
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 72
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 72

As editor of the award-winning Library of America collection of George Washington's writings and a curator of the great man's original papers, John Rhodehamel has established himself as an authority of our nation's preeminent founding father. Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man - who first achieved fame in his early twenties - is inextricably bound to his mythic status.

Not what I expected for an unabridged book

• By David Osborne Jr. on 04-13-17

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• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 595
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 512
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 510

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east.

Sean McMeekin Does It Again!

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These Truths

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• Narrated by: Jill Lepore
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• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,324
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 2,070
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,032

In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them.

Good Story but distracting sound engineering

• By MindSpiker on 11-21-18

What listeners say about George Washington, Volume 1

• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.7 out of 5.0
• 5 out of 5 stars 4.9 out of 5.0

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Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

Fine work on Washington

This is a classic biography of the first president and general of the American Revolution. The biographer’s mission is to show Washington as he really was - aiming for reality as opposed to those who turned Washington into an unbelievably perfect individual or to the opposite view of the postmodern revisionists. Freeman goes into a great deal of detail on Virginia society into which Washington was born. Looking forward to the next installment of the work!

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George Washington, a biography

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You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington Hardcover – February 4, 2020

• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Viking
• Publication date February 4, 2020
• Dimensions 9.25 x 1.3 x 6.38 inches
• ISBN-10 0735224102
• ISBN-13 978-0735224100
• See all details

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

His Mother's Son

When it came to family, Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, was always unlucky. Her father died when she was an infant. By the time she turned twelve, she had buried her stepfather, her half brother, and her mother. Mary's two surviving siblings, although grown and married, did not take her in; instead, she became the legal ward of a neighbor.

Her life immediately got worse. The man who had worked for her late family as an overseer successfully sued her for back wages, and Mary, as a girl in early America, would have little opportunity to recover the financial loss. For her, everything depended on marrying well, just as it had for her mother, who had come to America as an indentured servant.

In 1731, at the age of twenty-three, Mary found a promising match. Augustine Washington, an educated widower fourteen years her senior, was a justice of the peace who owned a small tobacco farm, and an increasing number of slaves.

The details of their twelve-year marriage are scant, but one thing is for sure: It produced six children, whom they raised at Ferry Farm, a modest enterprise outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia. George was their first, followed by Betty, Samuel, John Augustine, and Charles Washington. (Their youngest daughter, Mildred, died at sixteen months old.) They lived in a two-story house that looked out on the Rappahannock River and slave quarters, rough wooden structures that housed about twenty people of African descent. The tobacco-drying sheds, the dairy barn, the smokehouse, and Mary's vegetable and medicinal herb gardens lay beyond.

Mary's husband and stepsons had attended the prestigious Appleby Grammar School in England, and she planned to send her own sons there, too, no doubt with dreams of social advancement in mind. Mary had never left Virginia, but her sons would see the motherland.

And then, in 1743, her husband died. Augustine was buried with his first wife, a sign of things to come for Mary and her five children. His sons from his first marriage, Lawrence, twenty-five, and Augustine, Jr., twenty-three, inherited the bulk of the estate-including Mount Vernon. Lawrence gifted his stepmother a mourning ring, but neither he nor his brother had any legal obligation to her. Mary and her five children were left to manage Ferry Farm on their own. George was never going to Appleby.

Mary, now thirty-five, took up the job of maintaining a property that legally belonged to her eleven-year-old son. Having learned at an early age how it felt to be powerless, she started off decisively, selling off some of the family's best tracts. The corn, flax, wheat, oat, rye, vegetables, and tobacco grown on the remaining land would have to be enough to feed and support her family, the people she enslaved, and her farm animals. With great luck and even better weather, there might be a big enough yield to sell in Great Britain.

Unfortunately for Mary, the years that followed were recorded as dry. She managed to scrape together enough to sell abroad, but that was only half the battle. British merchants had a monopoly on trade, and they couldn't be depended on to deal fairly. Their terms stated that no sale was final until the product reached Great Britain. This allowed them to accuse American farmers, and they often did, of including inferior crops, especially with small operations. When Mary tried to sell her tobacco, she was twice accused-and twice vindicated. By the 1760s, she had decided the enterprise wasn't worth the trouble.

And throughout all this struggle, Mary's efforts, past immediate survival, offered her no long-term guarantees. At the age of twenty-one, Washington would inherit the entirety of Ferry Farm. But that was it. Augustine had made no provisions in his will to educate his younger sons, abroad or at home. Soon, Washington would have to drop out of a local school. He would spend the rest of his life trying to catch up.

Mary could have remarried. It was such a commonplace practice, in fact, that Augustine's will anticipated it. A new husband would have offered her some degree of financial security and, presuming she was lonely, companionship, even love. And Mary was a catch: She had a home, however temporary, and a hearty constitution. But Mary wasn't eager to submit to a new husband's demands. (Perhaps she had learned a lesson from her own mother's second marriage. Tellingly, her eldest son would later come to the defense of remarried widows, against husbands who illegally withheld their wives' property.) Instead, she poured her energy into the farm and her children, especially George and Betty.

Mary remained strategically close to her stepsons. Lawrence, who was ten years her junior, had come back from Appleby with the entitlement and ambition of a colonizer, not of a man born in the colonies. With a commission from King George II, he had served as a captain in the War of Jenkins' Ear, fighting the Spanish in the West Indies. Lawrence returned the summer after his father died and immediately capitalized on his recent inheritance and glamorous war experience by marrying exceptionally well. Ann Fairfax, daughter of Colonel William Fairfax, lived at Belvoir, the grand estate bordering Lawrence's Mount Vernon. She offered him entry into what was arguably the colony's most powerful family.

Mary made sure that Washington was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon, and thus also at Belvoir, where he could observe elite masculinity up close. Washington supplemented his fieldwork by studying Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, a sixteenth-century book on etiquette. He likely copied down all 110 lessons merely to work on his penmanship, but what he managed to absorb didn't hurt his reputation among the gentry.

The Abridged Rules of Civility 

2  When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usualy Discovered.

7  Put not off your Cloths in the presence of Others, nor go out your Chambers half Drest.

24  Do not laugh too loud or too much at any Publick [Spectacle].

54  Play not the Peacock, looking every where about you, to See if you be well Deck't, if your Shoes fit well if your Stockings sit neatly, and Cloths handsomely.

56  Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad Company.

73  Think before you Speak pronounce not imperfectly nor bring ou[t] your Words too hastily but orderly & distinctly.

82  Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Carefull to keep your Promise.

90  Being Set at meal Scratch not neither Spit Cough or blow your Nose except there's a Necessity for it.

92  Take no Salt or cut Bread with your Knife Greasy.

100  Cleanse not your teeth with the Table Cloth Napkin Fork or Knife but if Others do it let it be done wt. a Pick Tooth.

Washington understood his role. He moved with seeming ease between the sometimes desperate conditions of Ferry Farm and the genteel abundance of Mount Vernon. On one occasion, however, he could not make the two-day ride to visit Lawrence because there wasn't enough corn to feed his horse. According to Washington, the animal was "in very poor order," a startling admission in Virginia, where men who traveled even the shortest distances on foot were understood to be poor. If the animals were hungry, then the future president and his family-and most of all, their slaves-were likely suffering, too.

The masters of Mount Vernon and Belvoir knew that Washington was not one of them, but they recognized that he was a quick study. His eagerness to be helped no doubt flattered their egos, and he became a kind of pet project. They decided that he was in need of travel and adventure, and that the only way to get it was by sea. But since Washington could not pay his own way, they concluded he would have to join the British Royal Navy as a midshipman. They then launched an almost conspiratorial campaign to achieve their goal.

Mary Washington was no fool. At first, she seemed open to the idea of Washington's enlistment in the navy, but it didn't take long for her to realize she was being set up. She had learned in her youth to view the world with a critical eye, and in her time running a small farm, that eye had sharpened. Would Washington really find opportunity at sea? Was it better than what he would find at home? And what were the risks to her fourteen-year-old son?

Mary had good reason to believe they were great. Lawrence's own letters home from service had been full of tales of disease, deprivation, and death. His brother-in-law had lost his life in a naval battle with the French. And both had been officers; Washington would be a midshipman, one of the lowest-ranking, subjugated positions on a vessel. (As it happens, her instincts were right. Of the recruits who joined the navy at Washington's age, about a third did not survive their first two years in the navy-and there was little chance of promotion before then.)

It seems Mary tried to discuss these concerns with Lawrence's co-conspirators, but they had no patience for them. Robert Jackson, the executor of her late husband's will, dismissed them as "trifling objections such as fond and unthinking mothers naturally suggest."

Others, however, agreed with her. Joseph Ball, Mary's half brother in England, thought the whole thing was a terrible idea:

I think he had better be put apprentice to a tinker, for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the common liberty of the subject; for they will press him from ship to ship where he has fifty shillings a month, and make him take twenty-three, and cut and slash and use him like a negro, or rather like a dog.

And with that, the matter was settled. Whether Mary handed down her decision or she reached it in consultation with her son, we'll never know. But in the aftermath, no one seemed at odds over it. Washington visited Mount Vernon just as often, and Lawrence called on Joseph Ball the next time he went to England. He even brought back presents for Mary.

If  Washington had ever truly wanted to become a midshipman, his interest was probably less about the experience than the twenty-three shillings a month he would have earned. The situation at Ferry Farm was increasingly dire. "With much truth I can say, I never felt the want of money so sensibly since I was a boy of 15 years old," he would later write. But his mother wouldn't sacrifice him to the navy, no matter how bad things got.

Mary's children stayed at home with her until there was a good reason for them to leave. In 1750, Washington gave away his sister, Betty, age seventeen, to Fielding Lewis, the son of a respectable merchant in town. Like her mother and grandmother, she pushed the boundaries of wifehood in early America: Her mark and signature can be found alongside her husband's on business transactions, from land purchases to tobacco shipments.

Washington, meanwhile, was becoming Mary's business partner more than her child. An appetite for land ran in his father's family, a side he seemed eager to emulate, and so Mary encouraged him to become a surveyor. The job attracted young men precisely because it offered upward mobility; a surveyor might earn a hundred pounds annually, and he was first on the scene, able to buy the choicest properties for himself. The profession suited Washington's personality: He liked the outdoors, he was good at math, and he could use his father's surveying tools. (He later brought some of those tools on his presidential tours of the northern and southern states.)

Lawrence and the Fairfaxes were supportive, too. They hired Washington to look after their western holdings, allowing him to skip a long apprenticeship. They also talked him up among the local gentry. By age seventeen, he was the surveyor of Culpeper County, the youngest ever hired, and by eighteen he had purchased thousands of acres of land in the Shenandoah Valley. Thanks to him, there was finally steady money coming in at Ferry Farm.

"Pleases My Taste"

While Washington was thriving, his half brother was failing. Lawrence's misfortunes began in 1749 with a cough so bad that he had to sail to England for medical care. It was tuberculosis, which only worsened during the trip. Nor did his illness improve the following year when he traveled to the spa town of Warm Springs, Virginia, to bathe in its reputedly restorative waters. Facing another long, frigid Virginia winter, during which he would most likely be quarantined from his wife, who had just given birth to a baby girl and had already lost three newborns, Lawrence set his sights on the Caribbean.

He chose to risk hurricane season in the West Indies in hopes that a few warm months of rest and relaxation in Barbados would help. He invited Washington, who had never been outside of Virginia, and together they boarded the Success, a small trading ship. For six weeks, Washington distracted himself from the "fickle & Merciless Ocean" by recording the weather and by fishing for barracuda, mahi mahi, and shark. (He rarely caught anything.) Finally, at four o'clock in the morning on November 2, 1751, they arrived in Barbados, a diminutive land mass that had become the economic and political hub of the British Empire.

The nineteen-year-old Washington was immediately taken with the flora and fauna. He sampled avocados, guavas, and pineapples for the first time, writing "[N]one pleases my taste as dos the Pine." But he was most interested in the people-though not the enslaved Africans who were brought there in chains to grow and harvest sugar. "[A] Man of oppulent fortune And infamous Charactar was indicted for committing a rape on his servant Maid," he reported, "and was brought in Guiltless and sav'd by one single Evidence." Washington watched the "not overzealously beloved" governor in action and dined with the island's elite. They invited him to their "Beefsteak and Tripe Club," where he met judges and admirals and listened to the concerns of wealthy merchants and commodores. It was a far more diverse and worldly set of men than Lawrence knew back home.

Washington hardly mentions Lawrence, then thirty-four, who was usually too weak to leave his quarters. Soon enough, illness came for Washington, too. "Was strongly attacked with the small Pox," he wrote in his diary on November 16, 1751. Although he emerged with some scarring on his face, he also acquired the gift of immunity. Smallpox was rare in the Colonies, and his resistance to the virus would serve him well during the Revolution.

Washington recovered quickly. Lawrence did not. In late December 1751, they parted ways in Barbados. Lawrence boarded a ship for Bermuda, and Washington headed home on the Industry. He spent nearly the entire trip seasick and was at one point robbed by a fellow passenger, but he was a changed man. He had survived a great illness and traveled what would ultimately be the farthest distance of his life.

When Washington returned home, he delivered letters from the gentry of Barbados to Robert Dinwiddie, the British governor of Virginia, who welcomed him with a dinner invitation. He seemed to finally feel like a person of distinction, confident enough of his prospects to court one wealthy, unattainable young woman after another. When Elizabeth Fauntleroy rejected him, he wrote to her father, who owned a considerable amount of land, seeking a visit with "Miss Betcy, in hopes of a revocation of the former, cruel sentence and see if I can meet with any alteration in my favor." During a visit to Belvoir, Washington wrote to a friend that he'd flirted with George Fairfax's sister-in-law, Mary Cary. She's "a very agreeable Young Lady," he said, but one who "revives my former Passion for your Low Land Beauty." (The identity of the Low Land Beauty has never been confirmed.) If Miss Betcy's wary father wrote back, Washington did not keep the letter-but it is safe to assume that Fauntleroy, a member of the Richmond elite, was uninterested in a young man of no fortune or great estate.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; First Edition (February 4, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735224102
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735224100
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.07 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.25 x 1.3 x 6.38 inches
• #405 in American Revolution Biographies (Books)
• #1,161 in U.S. Revolution & Founding History
• #1,243 in US Presidents

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About the author

Alexis Coe an award winning historian and New York Times Bestselling Author of YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST and ALICE+FREDA FOREVER (which will soon be a major motion picture). She appears in and was a Consulting Producer on the History Channel's WASHINGTON, Executive Produced by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Alexis is the host of NO MAN'S LAND, The Wing's podcast on women's history, and co-hosted PRESIDENTS ARE PEOPLE TOO! from Audible. Alexis has contributed to the New Yorker, New York Times, Atlantic, Slate, the Paris Review Daily, the Guardian, and many others. Her work has appeared in various editions of BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS. She holds a graduate degree in American history, and was a research curator at the NYPL.

www.alexiscoe.com

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Customers find the book easy to read and understand, with a unique viewpoint and concise asides. They also appreciate the interesting information, fresh take on George Washington's life, and witty humor.

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Customers find the book easy to read, engaging, and interesting. They also say it's an important read for young adults and history enthusiasts. Readers also appreciate the unique viewpoint of the author and the concise asides.

"...This biography, these 200+ pages, were entertaining , informative, and downright fun. Are there items we can quibble over? Listicles of dubious value?..." Read more

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Customers find the book interesting, providing an honest view of the 1st President. They say it's a good read for anyone wanting an accurate, balanced narrative. Readers also appreciate the different layout of information and the effective use of charts to make various points. They find the content fresh and humanizes President Washington.

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The 10 Best Books on President George Washington

Essential books on george washington.

There are countless books on George Washington, and it comes with good reason, beyond serving as America’s first President (1789-1797), he was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

“There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature,” he believed. “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s most consequential figures to the heights of societal contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on George Washington.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation and the first president of the United States. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume biography of George Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his adventurous early years, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America’s first president.

Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader by Robert Middlekauff

Focusing on Washington’s early years, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Middlekauff penetrates his mystique, revealing his all-too-human fears, values, and passions. Rich in psychological detail regarding Washington’s temperament, idiosyncrasies, and experiences, this book shows a self-conscious Washington who grew in confidence and experience as a young soldier, businessman, and Virginia gentleman, and who was transformed into a patriot by the revolutionary ferment of the 1760s and ’70s.

Middlekauff makes clear that Washington was at the heart of not just the revolution’s course and outcome but also the success of the nation it produced. This vivid, insightful new account of the formative years that shaped a callow George Washington into an extraordinary leader is an indispensable book for truly understanding one of America’s great figures.

The Return of George Washington: 1783-1789 by Edward Larson

After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington shocked the world: he retired. In December 1783, General Washington, the most powerful man in the country, stepped down as Commander in Chief and returned to private life at Mount Vernon. Yet as Washington contentedly grew his estate, the fledgling American experiment floundered. Under the Articles of Confederation, the weak central government was unable to raise revenue to pay its debts or reach a consensus on national policy.

The states bickered and grew apart. When a Constitutional Convention was established to address these problems, its chances of success were slim. Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founding Fathers realized that only one man could unite the fractious states: George Washington. Reluctant, but duty-bound, Washington rode to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to preside over the Convention.

Although Washington is often overlooked in most accounts of the period, this masterful new history from Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward J. Larson brilliantly uncovers Washington’s vital role in shaping the Convention – and shows how it was only with Washington’s support and his willingness to serve as President that the states were brought together and ratified the Constitution, thereby saving the country.

His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis

To this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mount Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose “statue-like solidity” concealed volcanic energies and emotions.

Here is the impetuous young officer whose miraculous survival in combat half-convinced him that he could not be killed. Here is the free-spending landowner whose debts to English merchants instilled him with a prickly resentment of imperial power. We see the general who lost more battles than he won and the reluctant president who tried to float above the partisan feuding of his cabinet.

Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia.

Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington and many other Americans refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor’easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison at Trenton, killing or capturing nearly a thousand men. A second battle of Trenton followed within days.

The Americans held off a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis’s best troops, then were almost trapped by the British force. Under cover of night, Washington’s men stole behind the enemy and struck them again, defeating a brigade at Princeton. The British were badly shaken. In twelve weeks of winter fighting, their army suffered severe damage, their hold on New Jersey was broken, and their strategy was ruined.

This gem among books on George Washington reveals the crucial role of contingency in these events. We see how the campaign unfolded in a sequence of difficult choices by many actors, from generals to civilians, on both sides.

Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Flexner

After more than two decades, this dramatic and concise single-volume distillation of James Thomas Flexner’s definitive four-volume biography of George Washington, which received a Pulitzer Prize citation and a National Book Award for the fourth volume, has itself become an American classic.

The author unflinchingly paints a portrait of Washington: slave owner, brave leader, man of passion, reluctant politician, and fierce general. His complex character and career are neither glorified nor vilified here; rather, Flexner sets up a brilliant counterpoint between Washington’s public and private lives and gives us a challenging look at the man who has become as much a national symbol as the American flag.

An Imperfect God  by Henry Wiencek

When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his “only unavoidable subject of regret.” In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father’s engagement with slavery at every stage of his life – as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman.

Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington’s attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system’s evil.

Wiencek’s revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington’s determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine.

George Washington’s heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

George Washington: A Biography by Washington Irving

Washington Irving’s  Life of George Washington (published in five volumes in 1856-59) was the product of his last years and remains his most personal work. Christened with the name of the great general, Irving was blessed by Washington while still a boy of seven, and later came to know many of the prominent figures of the Revolution. In these pages he describes them using firsthand source material and observation. The result is a book which is fascinating not only for its subject (the American Revolution), but also for how it reveals in illuminating detail the personality and humanity of a now remote, towering icon.

But one cannot read Irving’s  Life  without marveling at the supreme art behind it, for his biography is foremost a work of literature. Charles Neider’s abridgment and editing of Irving’s long out-of-print classic has created a literary work comparable in importance and elegance to the original.   George Washington, A Biography , Neider’s title for his edition of Irving’s  Life , makes the work accessible to modern audiences.

Founding Friendship by Stuart Eric Leibiger

Although the friendship between George Washington and James Madison was eclipsed in the early 1790s by the alliances of Madison with Jefferson and Washington with Hamilton, their collaboration remains central to the constitutional revolution that launched the American experiment in republican government. Washington relied heavily on Madison’s advice, pen, and legislative skill, while Madison found Washington’s prestige indispensable for achieving his goals for the new nation.

Observing these two founding fathers in light of their special relationship, this gem among books on George Washington argues against a series of misconceptions about the men. Madison emerges as neither a strong nationalist of the Hamiltonian variety nor a political consolidationist; he did not retreat from nationalism to states’ rights in the 1790s, as other historians have charged. Washington, far from being a majestic figurehead, exhibits a strong constitutional vision and firm control of his administration.

1776 by David McCullough

In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence – when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives,  1776  is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King’s men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

If you enjoyed this guide to books on George Washington, be sure to check out our list of The 10 Best Books on President John Adams !