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Washington a life5/21/2023 ![]() ![]() Yet he was constantly in debt, thanks in part to his lavish lifestyle. ![]() The father of his country owned a great deal of his country - tens of thousands of acres - and scores of slaves. His strength of will and sheer presence helped keep an underequipped and undermanned army in the field for year after shoeless year.Ĭhernow splendidly describes Washington's troubled relationship with money. When the revolution came, he was ready to lead. He stumbled in battle, won glory and learned to discipline himself. Desperate for a commission in the king's army, young Washington resented the mildest slight. Chernow builds sympathy for a man born into the ruling class of colonial Virginia, the slave-owning gentry. An assertion that a wilderness expedition was "incomparably daunting" naturally calls to mind entirely comparable journeys.īut the grand redwood forest of Washington's life draws attention away from the debris underfoot. ![]() ![]() The breathlessness becomes counterproductive. Chernow pumps up descriptions as if he were Stan Lee writing about Spider-Man: The "powerfully rough-hewn" Washington's "matchless strength" increases to "superhuman strength" in the same paragraph. At times, clichés and dead phrases rustle noisily on the path. He attains this despite an uneven prose style. There were moments on my march to the end of his story on page 817 when I thought he could have shortened the trip, yet I still felt that the writing was purposeful, not merely encyclopedic. ![]()
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