A review by lakecake
His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis

3.0

Meh. I think I'm ruined for short biographies. This was a good look at Washington's life, but was so short that it mostly glossed over much of the important things in his life. Part of that may have been because so much of Washington's personal correspondence has been lost, so actually trying to figure out what he was thinking or planning isn't really possible without speculating. I respect immensely the fact that Ellis doesn't waste a lot of time on speculation, because I just don't find that to be the point of biography. I don't want to know what the author *thinks* of the person, I want research to tell me what the subject's contemporaries thought. So this work does a good job of that. But I think I need a chunkier more comprehensive biography to really make me happy.