July 2009

Only a week until our next book starts, and while there's plenty more to say about George, it's time to tee up the next book, which, it will come as no surprise to discover, is David McCullough's John Adams.



It's a bio to kill big bugs with, so get ready.

Myth-Making

George Washington is successful, in part, because he's tall.

At least, according to Joseph Ellis, he is. Apparently, since Washington towered over a lot of the Continental Congress and tended to keep quiet, they gave him command of the Continental Army. Oh, sure, there are other reasons--the need to bring Virginia's land-owning class into the fray, for example, and the fact that Washington is already pretty well known for his military exploits in the French-Indian War. But Washington's six feet and two inches of apparently impressive stature helps him get the job.

This actually makes sense, given the amount of self-creation that Washington indulges in; he talks his way into a officership in the French-Indian War. He inherits and marries his way into the land-owning class. He knows that silence can speak louder than words. He seems rigidly fixed on self-improvement--one of the only early writings we have of his is a (perhaps copied) list of rules for better living.

And the weird thing about Washington is that all this works--he does become a pretty solid military leader (even if he does lose more battles than he wins), he's the go-to landowner in Virginia (and manages his estates so well that he's one of the few founding fathers not to die broke). In an odd way, he's not just the perfect guy to be president; he's the perfect guy to create the office of president.

We indulge in this myth-making about GW, too. He has wooden teeth, he threw a dollar across the Potomac, he stood in the front of the boat as it crossed the icy Delaware (um, no; it would tip). Maybe that's because there are so many gaps in the Washington story that we have to fill it in with speculation, or maybe it's because so much time has passed since he walked this earth that he's now a face on the dollar bill, a day off in February. It certainly makes this possible (oddly NSFW):



Imagine that with, say, Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan.

Soon: we answer the burning question: What kind of cookies did the Washingtons eat?

Primary Decisions

According the Library of Congress catalog (which got its start with a president's library, although we'll discuss that in a few months), there are 1,134 biographies of George Washington. Washington's own papers run to a few dozen collected volumes. With so many choices, how do we choose a single biography to read? Can we possibly encompass the width and breadth of 43 presidents' lives in single books when we could easily spend our lives reading about just one?

Well, no. So we've got to pick one. In some cases, the choice is easy, thanks to a recent major biography (David McCullough's John Adams, for example. Or there just isn't much written about the president (William Henry Harrison, I'm looking in your direction). Sometimes we'll let what we can get at the library make the decision for us.

But Washington--well, that's tricky. Lots about him. After some reflection (and digging around Amazon), we've settled on Joseph J. Ellis's His Excellency, George Washington. On the surface, it's got lots going for it--Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his writings on the Founding Fathers, the almost-four-years-old book is still in Amazon's top 3,000 (not to mention the best-selling bio of GW on the Kindle), and there's even a bit of scandal about Ellis's claims of Washington's relationship with his neighbor Sally Fairfax. But scratch the surface a little, and there's something interesting going on with the author, too; something that might reveal a little about why and how biography gets written.

"I do solemnly swear..."

The idea is a relatively simple one; in 42 months, we'll perform a ritual. Fast food restuarants will offer a free chicken sandwich or donut when you come in with your "I Voted" sticker. A phalanx of senior citizens will look up your name in their books. You'll stand in a booth and mark a bubble, or punch a hole, or (god forbid) use a touchscreen, and you'll cast your vote for somebody--Barack Obama or his opponent--to be president.

Forty-three men have been president in the 233 years of the United States; some good, some bad, some forgettable. One was president for 13 years. One was president for 32 days. They've ranged between 5'4" and 6'4". One weighed 332 pounds. They've all been men, and until this year, they had all been white men.

So let's do some Old School History here. Let's dig into the Lives of Great Men and see what we can learn about them, and about the office, and about the country they ran. Let's see who made it better, who made it worse, and who just watered the plants for four years.

Here's the plan: one biography a month, with the occasional doubling up to keep on schedule. We start with the guy on the dollar bill and we end on the guy in the Oval Office. Along the way, we learn a little about how history's written and how biographies change. Read along!