The biography of Washington written by his close friend and military aide

The only biography authorized by Washington himself offers a rare, intimate glimpse of his life through his assumption of the presidency. The text includes remarks he made upon reading a portion of the manuscript.

Revered as a general and trusted as America's first elected leader, George Washington is considered a great many things in the contemporary imagination, but an intellectual is not one of them. In correcting this longstanding misconception, George Washington: A Life in Books offers a stimulating literary biography that traces the effects of a life spent in self-improvement.

Volume Two takes the nation's first president from the end of his career as a great general, through his final days at Mount Vernon, to the often tumultuous years of his presidency.