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His Excellency: George Washington
The author of seven highly acclaimed books, Joseph J. Ellis has crafted a landmark biography that brings to life in all his complexity the most important and perhaps least understood figure in American history, George Washington. With his careful attention to detail and his lyrical prose, Ellis has set a new standard for biography.
Drawing from the newly catalogued Washington papers at the University of Virginia, Joseph Ellis paints a full portrait of George Washington’s life and career–from his military years through his two terms as president. Ellis illuminates the difficulties the first executive confronted as he worked to keep the emerging country united in the face of adversarial factions. He richly details Washington’s private life and illustrates the ways in which it influenced his public persona. Through Ellis’s artful narration, we look inside Washington’s marriage and his subsequent entrance into the upper echelons of Virginia’s plantation society. We come to understand that it was by managing his own large debts to British merchants that he experienced firsthand the imperiousness of the British Empire. And we watch the evolution of his attitude toward slavery, which led to his emancipating his own slaves in his will. Throughout, Ellis peels back the layers of myth and uncovers for us Washington in the context of eighteenth-century America, allowing us to comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishments and the character of his spirit and mind.
When Washington died in 1799, Ellis tells us, he was eulogized as “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Since then, however, his image has been chisled onto Mount Rushmore and printed on the dollar bill. He is on our landscape and in our wallets but not, Ellis argues, in our hearts. Ellis strips away the ivy and legend that have grown up over the Washington statue and recovers the flesh-and-blood man in all his passionate and fully human prowess.
In the pantheon of our republic’s founders, there were many outstanding individuals. And yet each of them–Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison– acknowledged Washington to be his superior, the only indispensable figure, the one and only “His Excellency.” Both physically and politically, Washington towered over his peers for reasons this book elucidates. His Excellency is a full, glorious, and multifaceted portrait of the man behind our country’s genesis, sure to become the authoritative biography of George Washington for many decades.
Manufacturer: Knopf
Price Range: $2.95 - $26.95
 His Excellency: George Washington
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| User Reviews |  | A suspect treatment
rating: 1
The modern "pyschological" biography attempts what is probably an impossibility: to penetrate and elucidate the core "personality" or "character" of an historic figure. The danger that the resulting portrait may be a novel masquerading as a biography, a creation of the author rather than a rendition of the subject, is great. Still more so when the author has clear psychological quirks of his own, and a contemporary political axe to grind. When he also has formidable literary skills, the danger of creating a cogent, compelling lie is acute. This is certainly so in the works of Joseph J. Ellis. He has admitted telling lies about his alleged role in the Vietnam War, demonstrating that his own character and personality are not wedded to the truth. Stranger still, in light of the content of his self-aggrandizing fabrications, he is an avowed political liberal. Something very odd was going on in his own psyche. More recently, he has written that the political vision of Barack Obama accords with that of the Founding Fathers (or, as Ellis calls them, the "so-called founding fathers"). There are thus multiple reasons to be skeptical of Ellis' several attempts to psychoanalyze the Founders. In this volume the patient on the couch is Washington. It is altogether too convenient that Ellis' Washington is a man whose primary impulse is to seek control in all things, but above all in the attempt to control his own reputation (or, as we might say, his "image"), both for contemporaries and for posterity. That's the psychology; as to the politics, Ellis' Washington is the Founding Liberal, prescient in his perception of the need for a strong national government that would curb the rights that Jeffersonians, and today's conservatives, regard as reserved to the states and the people. According to Ellis, the psychology and the politics are linked: Washington's belief in a strong national government was an external projection of his inner control. As is typical with this sort of work, any behavior or pronouncement that departs from the general "insight" is just the exception that proves the rule. Ellis even manages to turn Washington's Farewell Address, with its admonition against foreign involvement, into a harbinger of Kissingerian internationalism. Although this book is well written, indeed a joy to read, and is superficially convincing, I am deeply suspicious.
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the de-mythed myth
rating: 2
While it's totally hip to de-mythify things our parents (silly things) thought were good, Ellis's de-mythification of Washington is not satisfying. His basic thesis is that Washington was a nincompoop who happened to be in the right place at the right time his whole life. That's unlikely, and it doesn't explain why Washington was a legend in his own time as well as our own, unlike most "mythical" legends, whose myths grow in time.
Five stars for doing what everyone else does.
Two stars for insight.
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Excellent
rating: 5
Some have wanted to reserve 5 stars to a "War and Peace" type book. To me 5 stars means the book did what it set out to do and did it well. "His Excellency" indeed did. It is an excellent short biography of the father of our country. When I picked this book up, I realized all I knew about Washington was what I had been taught in grade school.
Ellis is an excellent biographer who delves into many aspects of Washington's life. The narrative moved well and was entertaining. Some may be put off by Ellis' style of going into analysis of issues. I found that this added to my understanding.
Washington indeed was a great man who's influence reaches us to this day. Now I know why!
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Character Assassination
rating: 1
It is sad. The author has made big bucks on a book that essentially is aimed at bringing George Washington down to the level of today's politicians. There certainly is an audience for this kind of interpretation of our Founding Father and it can only be accomplished by someone who has a perspective and wants to use his skills to slant the reader's view toward his own negativity. I much preferred to read David McCullough's history, "1776," which dwells primarily on Washington as a person and a leader, but without the hidden agenda (whatever it is) of the author of "His Excellency," which is really an attempt to rewrite history and bring Washington down to the level of a Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon in a colonial setting. Shame on you, Mr. Ellis, although you are entitled to your opinion -- which is what this book is all about.
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Deliberately misleading
rating: 1
I was extremely disappointed in this book. This book was purchased as a gift for me, and I looked forward to reading it. From the beginning, I was disappointed by the tone of the book, which casts a negative tone on the father of our country.
As I researched some of Ellis' sources, I found that in several parts of his book, he stated items as facts that were completely false.
Ellis, following a popular trend of today, insinuates that George Washington was in love with his friend's wife, Sally Fairfax, and that he felt passionately in love with her throughout his life.
Ellis admits that all we do know is based primarily on three letters Washington wrote to Sally (Fairfax). The last letter he cites was one Washington wrote near the end of his life. Mr. Ellis states that "in this letter, he confessed to an elderly Sally that she had been the passion of his youth, that he had never been able to forget her, 'nor been able to eradicate from my mind those happy moments, the happiest in my life, which have enjoyed in your company."
I decided to research his references, and look up the text of Washington's letter on the Library of Congress website. They have actual images of all of the original letters of George Washington. What I found relieved me greatly and set my mind at ease. It also made me feel disgusted than an author who claims to accurately represent the life of such a noble man could be so purposely deceptive.
The actual letter was written by Washington in his later years, with his wife. He talked about how he was remembering the times of harmony and friendship that he and his wife spent with Sally and her husband at their home. He describes these times as some of the happiest of his life. At the end of his part of the letter he says "Mrs. Washington is about to give you an account of the changes which have happened in the neighbourhood and in our own family."
Mr. Ellis said that in this letter he confessed that she had been the passion of his youth. That is simply a blatant falsehood.
Ellis also states that there is no evidence to show whether the relationship between Washington and Fairfax ever crossed the sexual threshold or not. Why does he even feel the need to include such a ridiculous statement? It is akin to saying that although someone spends some time at the local bank, we don't have evidence to show whether they were a bank robber or not.
Attempting to insinuate that the framers of our Constitution such as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin were immoral men, is happening more and more often in our country.
In an excellent book "The Rewriting of America's History", there is an example of how deceitful this influence can be. The book explained how in an earlier edition of a school history textbook it stated that George Washington had a hot temper that he kept masterfully controlled. In a later edition of the same textbook, it simply said: "George Washington had a hot temper." I think that is a powerful example of how a subtle adjustment can completely change our thinking of his character.
I have found that this is happening more and more frequently in our world today as I have studied the founding father's lives including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others.
I could continue on with how careful research contradicts the opinions of Mr. Ellis, but I will simply recommend a much better book. "The Real George Washington", published by The National Center for Constitutional Studies.
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His Excellency: George Washington
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