George Washington’s America: A Biography Through His Maps
by Barnet Schecter
Walker, 303 pp., $67.50
Washington: A Life
by Ron Chernow
Penguin, 904 pp., $40.00
How many books on George Washington do we need before the monument finally becomes a man, before the remote and impenetrable statue is at last brought down to earth and made into an accessible human being? Right from the beginning Washington seems to have been a distant and unapproachable figure. “Did anybody ever see Washington nude?” asked Nathaniel Hawthorne. “It is inconceivable. He…was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.”
