JOSEPH J. ELLIS. His Excellency: George Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2004 Pp. xiv, 320. $26.95

Abstract

Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph J. Ellis sought to write a fresh biography of George Washington, based on his subject's character, a twenty-first-century version of Marcus Cunliffe's classic Man and Monument (1958). Ellis has succeeded spectacularly, producing what will undoubtedly become the standard Washington biography. Ellis's Washington is both human and sagacious, the “Foundingest Father of them all” (p. xiv), whose success stemmed from a combination of realism rooted in practical life experience rather than book learning, and Herculean self-control gained from a life spent subduing both his boundless ambition and his volcanic personal passions. Ellis believes that two seemingly antithetical forces shaped Washington's early years. From the East came the deferential world of British patronage and hierarchy, in which Washington successfully curried favor from the well-connected Fairfax family and vainly sought advancement in the British military. From the West came experiences on the Ohio frontier, where Washington carried out surveying expeditions and military campaigns against the French and Indians. Going to war instead of to college, Ellis writes, scarred and immunized Washington against idealism.