His Excellency

Starred review from August 2, 2004
In this follow-up to his bestselling Founding Brothers
, 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. Ellis recreates the cultural and political context into which Washington strode to provide leadership to the incipient American republic. 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. 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. 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. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW
. (Nov. 1)

Forecast:
The 500,000 first printing seems steep but could be justified by Ellis's record and the current popularity of the Founders. First serial to
American Heritage magazine.

June 1, 2004
As big as Washington himself, this work by the prize-winning author of American Sphinx gets a whooping 500,000-copy first printing and a nine-city author tour.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2005
Adult/High School -As Ellis indicates in his well-documented acknowledgments and endnotes, this book relies heavily on the "Papers of George Washington" series, which provides access to the president's correspondence. Since no new documentary evidence is available, the attraction is Ellis's assessment of Washington's character and impeccable judgment. He keeps Washington on his pedestal while pointing out just a few flaws in the president's personality: ambition from an early age (yet how American!), slaveholding (although he came to regret this, and ordered in his will that upon Martha's death the slaves were to be freed), and no great military talent. These defects were vastly outweighed by his character and practical wisdom. Ellis notes that, even among that group of brilliant men known as our Founding Fathers, Washington was recognized by every one of them as "the Foundingest Father of them all." This book does offer new insights regarding Washington's disposition of his wealth and property in his will. Ellis does an excellent job of infusing a sometimes remote national icon with breath and life, so that readers are able to see the human Washington operating in his tumultuous period of history while towering above it -no mean authorial feat." -Edward Redmond, Library of Congress, Washington, DC"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2004
Ellis, author of the best-selling " American Sphinx "(1997), a National Book Award-winning biography of Thomas Jefferson, also wrote the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning " Founding Brothers" (2000), an account of the Revolutionary generation. Now he takes on the daunting task of estimating the "Foundingest Father of them all." He conceived this "modest-sized book" as a trim distillation of the most current scholarship, resulting in "a fresh portrait focused tightly on Washington's character." No Washington-lite here, though; rather, this is Washington forthright. "First in war, first in peace"--commanding general of the American army in the Revolutionary War and first and precedent-setting president steering the new republic in the correct direction--are the two major aspects of Washington's public-service record and, naturally, the dual focus of Ellis' vibrant study. His concern is how Washington performed in each capacity and what his performance reveals about his general and abiding character traits. From Ellis' provocative conclusion that "a compelling case can be made that [Washington's] swift response to the smallpox epidemic and to a policy of inoculation was the most important strategic decision of his military career" to his assertion that slavery "linked the subject Washington cared about most, posterity's judgment, with the subject he had come to recognize as the central contradiction of the revolutionary era," the author is unafraid to see Washington anew, without trappings and free of idolatry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)