The Return of George Washington

August 4, 2014
After eight years of leading the fledgling colonies in their war for independence, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief in order to return to private life. Yet the difficulties of establishing a new nation drew Washington back, and historian Larson, Pulitzer Prize–winner for Summer for the Gods, vividly recounts those events that led to Washington’s election as the first president of the United States. Washington spent the first two post-revolutionary years tending to Mount Vernon and his western lands, but kept close watch on the young confederacy’s political growing pains. Initially ambivalent about returning to politics, his sense that division among the states threatened national liberty caused him to join the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Larson brings to life the founders’ daily struggles to draw up a document that would preserve individual liberty while ensuring the new government’s supreme power and sovereignty. During the next year, with the Constitution in place, Washington articulated “three main objectives for America under the Constitution: respect abroad, prosperity at home, and development westward.” On May 1, 1789, Americans awoke under their first full federal administration, and “neither they nor their President would ever be the same.” Larson’s compulsively readable history shines new light on a little-discussed period of Washington’s life, illustrating his role as the indispensable American.

October 1, 2014

When George Washington dramatically resigned his commission in the Continental Army at the close of the Revolutionary War, he expressed his interest to exit public life for good and return to his beloved Mount Vernon on the shores of the Potomac. But it was not to be a quiet retirement. Soon Washington was swept into the movement to create a new, "energized" national government, a movement that would thrust the duty-bound general into new positions of leadership and cement his reputation for being indispensable. In this compelling, solidly researched work, historian Larson (history, Pepperdine Univ.; An Empire of Ice) canvasses an often overlooked chapter in Washington's life: the period between the Revolutionary War and his election as America's first president, along the way stressing Washington's role as "public figure and political leader during these critical years." VERDICT As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning work Summer of the Gods, Larson is a skilled storyteller combining scholarly research with a flair for relating historical events and personages to general readers. Recommended for those who enjoyed Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life (2010) as well as biography hounds and history buffs. [See Prepub Alert, 4/7/14.]--Brian Odom, Birmingham, AL

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