The title is fun! The cover is cheeky! The opening quote from Brad Neely’s beloved “Washington” video was greatly appreciated! It seemed like we were off to the races, but then…
…
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it got awkward. I listened to this as an audio book. The performance was fine, but the layout of the opening was just a mess. It probably worked better on paper, but the book started with ten minutes of list-reading. Then a prologue. Then an introduction. Then more list reading. I found it difficult to maintain my attention while lists of Washington’s farm animals went in one earbud and out the other. The book, which is mostly in chronological order, does sometimes jump through time and space and frequently reverts back to lists. The information was interesting, but the delivery was frustrating.
Alexis Coe makes a great point about the need to revisit history beyond the apocryphal stories and the biographies written by mostly (straight, white) men. In Washington’s past biographies, both contemporaries and biographers prostrate themselves at the foot of a mammoth granite statue when talking about George Washington. He was untouchable and inhuman. A deity, even. Coe points out how frequently these writers talk about George Washington’s thighs- so powerful! So capable! They (the men) go into great detail as to how he could not have been impotent (he fathered no children that we are aware of) because of, among many other things, the strength of his thighs.
I am not kidding.
Past biographers have also gone out of their way to besmirch the character of Washington’s female relatives, often editorializing based on one-line descriptors in letters. There’s a particularly pointed section where Coe lists every term used to describe Washington’s mother in Ron Chernow’s bio, and they are all sexist and rude. Coe takes a few wide swipes at Chernow, but backs up her statements with facts. Unfortunately, nearly all of the interesting argument lives within the introduction. The biography itself is sparse and mostly by-the-numbers. There are moments of personality throughout; some lines are genuinely funny; while describing the courtship of George and Martha was get to learn that “great love stories don’t often begin with dysentery”.
Coe also pays much more attention to Washington’s ownership and treatment of his many slaves than in any other Washington biography. She gives credit to Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s 2017 work Never Caught for opening the door and pushing the conversation towards Washington’s slaves, and does go into great detail regarding the human beings that Washington chose to buy, sell, trade, and punish throughout his lifetime. The old anecdote about Washington being the only Founding Father to free his slaves is *gasp* UNTRUE!
While the information is sometimes fascinating and the viewpoint is refreshing, the book feels thin. Details are repeated, timelines are condensed, and lists take up a great deal of its overall makeup. I am pleased that it exists, but I wish it had been stronger.