Ellis distills this unprecedented and unsurpassed record to give us an account both intimate and panoramic part biography, part political history, and part love story.Įllis describes the first meeting between the two as inauspicious-John was twenty-four, Abigail just fifteen, and each was entirely unimpressed with the other. John and Abigail Adams left an indelible and remarkably preserved portrait of their lives together in their personal correspondence: both Adamses were prolific letter writers (although John conceded that Abigail was clearly the more gifted of the two), and over the years they exchanged more than twelve hundred letters. First serial toĪmerican Heritage magazine.The Pulitzer Prize–winning, best-selling author of Founding Brothers and His Excellency brings America’s preeminent first couple to life in a moving and illuminating narrative that sweeps through the American Revolution and the republic’s tenuous early years.
16 pages of photos not seen by PWįorecast: The 500,000 first printing seems steep but could be justified by Ellis's record and the current popularity of the Founders. The Washington who emerges from these pages is similar to the one portrayed in a biographical study by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn published earlier this year, but Ellis's richer version leaves readers with a deeper sense of the man's humanity. Following Washington from the battlefield to the presidency, Ellis elegantly points out how he steered a group of bickering states toward national unity Ellis also elaborates on Washington's complex stances on issues like slavery and expansion into Native American territory. But more importantly, the letters and other documents Ellis draws on bring the aloof legend alive-as a young soldier who sought to rise through the ranks of the British army during the French and Indian War, convinced he knew the wilderness terrain better than his commanding officers as a Virginia plantation owner (thanks to his marriage) who watched over his accounts with a ruthless eye as the commander of an outmatched rebel army who, after losing many of his major battles, still managed to catch the British in an indefensible position.
Ellis recreates the cultural and political context into which Washington strode to provide leadership to the incipient American republic. , Ellis offers a magisterial account of the life and times of George Washington, celebrating the heroic image of the president whom peers like Jefferson and Madison recognized as "their unquestioned superior" while acknowledging his all-too-human qualities. In this follow-up to his bestselling Founding Brothers
0 kommentar(er)
