Book Review: Becoming George Washington by Stephen Yoch

Becoming George Washington by Stephen Yoch

E-Book, 382 pages
Wise Ink Creative Publishing
September 1, 2015
★★★★☆

Genre: Historical Fiction, President

Source: Received from Author/Publisher for review with HFVBT tour

George Washington, action hero . . .

Long before Washington was the old man on the dollar bill, he was a fatherless boy with few resources and even less education. So how did he become the most famous person in American history?

Becoming George Washington tells the story of a young man with boundless energy, bravery, and passion, who grew from a fatherless boy into a self-confident leader. At the same time, he struggled to suppress both an awful temper and his love for a married woman, Sally Fairfax. A courageous war hero, Washington rose to the pinnacle of Virginia politics. His experiences as a young man allowed him, decades later, to lead the Revolution.

This compelling historical novel reveals the person behind the famous face and how he grew to become America’s leading Founding Father.

Everyone knows the story of George Washington the great man that led the Continental Army to victory and then went on to become the First President of the United States. But what do they really know of the years that came before (because he was in his later life by that point)? The answer for most, not too much! Author Stephen Yoch takes the reader back in time to the years that really formed young George Washington into the man he would later become.

As someone who LOVES to read and learn about the presidents, I jumped at the chance to read this novel treatment of the earlier days of the first president. I have read some non-fiction that covered his earlier years, but even in non-fiction there is not usually an extended focus on this time period, with the desire to focus on his generalship or presidency. In this novel, we only see Washington in his younger iteration, and see what led to the man that the majority of us know.

For a man who just wanted to return to being a farmer in his later years, that was anything but what the young Washington wanted to do. Like most, he wanted to spread his wings and take on the world – and create a couple little scandals along the way maybe? Yoch does an excellent job of bringing this seemingly mythical man back down to earth and rooting him in the somewhat average life he led. He didn’t just wake up one day and was magically the man the country needed. He struggled and overcame and made mistakes all along the way. He made the man REAL and I felt that I really got to know him here and get inside his head.

I feel very comfortable recommending this book to any fan of presidential studies or of the early period of the United States.

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Yah Gotta Read This!
• Book Lovers Paradise

To get a feel for this book before committing to buying it, check out these excerpts!

Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | RJ Julia

Find Stephen Yoch: Website | Facebook


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Copyright © 2015 by The Maiden’s Court

Book Review: Washington’s Lady by Nancy Moser

Washington’s Lady by Nancy Moser
Ladies of History Series
Unabridged, 14 hr. 36 min.
Recorded Books
Linda Stevens (Narrator)
October 28, 2008
★★★★☆

Genre: Historical Fiction

Source: Personal Collection

“She dreams of a quiet life with her beloved George, but war looms... Though still a young woman, Martha Custis is a widow. But she is not without means and has no desire to remarry. Not, that is, until a striking war hero steps into her life and she realizes she is ready to love again. Yet she wonders whether this man, accustomed to courageous military exploits, can settle down to a simple life of farming and being a father to her children. Even as she longs for domestic bliss, Martha soon realizes she will have to risk everything dear to her and find the courage to get behind a dream much larger than her own. Known for moving first-person novels of Nannerl Mozart and Jane Austen, Nancy Moser now brings to life the loves and trials of the First First Lady of the United States.”

Martha is one of those Revolutionary women that has always intrigued me, but is one that I don’t know much about (I am much more well versed with Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison). The part of her life that I knew the most about was the Presidential years, so I was most interested in reading about her earlier life, especially her first husband, Daniel Custis. Interestingly, last summer while in Williamsburg, Virginia I accidentally happened upon the graves of Daniel Custis and two of their children, which intrigued me to know more.

A decent amount of time was spent on her marriage to Daniel Custis – comparable to the seven years in which they were married. While I didn’t get to know Daniel as well George Washington, I felt that Moser gave us enough to understand Martha’s relationship with him. On the other hand, Martha was portrayed well. She was given her own voice, in her own age. It is obvious that she was a strong and passionate woman – she held a lot of things together following Daniel’s death prior to her marriage to George. I was thrilled to see the family side of George Washington. He is typically portrayed as more reserved and stoic. Here we see him actually get mad as well as be very loving with his family.

The novel doesn’t spend much time on the actual Presidential years. The majority of the time spent on the Washington marriage is dedicated to the Revolutionary War years and then the retirement years following the presidency. I would have liked a little more about how Martha handled the years in the capital city. It almost glazed over this period, just barely touching upon certain aspects. As this is the aspect most people already know about, I can understand the desire to skip over it, but when the rest of her life was treated relatively chronologically, it stood out as an omission.

Overall Martha was done justice by Moser novel treatment. I felt that she really came alive within the pages. While there are some areas that I think could have been improved, it was overall an enjoyable novel.

★★★★☆

The audio production was just OK. I didn’t love the narrator’s voice and there wasn’t great definition of characters.

Author Nancy Moser also has written the following biographical novels: Just Jane, An Unlikely Suitor, Mozart’s Sister, and How Do I Love Thee?. You can visit Moser’s website for additional information about the book. If you would like to preview the story before reading it, why not try out this excerpt of the book?

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Lori’s Book Reviews
• Devourer of Books

Here are some choices for purchasing the book: Amazon, B&N, RJ Julia (my fav indie bookstore).

 

Copyright © 2014 by The Maiden’s Court

This content is owned and copyrighted 2009-2014 by The Maiden’s Court.

George Washington Finally Has A Library!

As we have established by now, I am a big fan of all things presidential. I found this little piece of information that really surprised me this week and I had to share. Can you believe that of all of the American presidents, the first one, George Washington, didn’t have a presidential library until this past Friday?  It only took 200+ years.  I find that so unbelievable considering that his home is one of the most visited presidential homes and that other more recent presidents have libraries.

Main Entrance to the Library
Photo Credit: Mount Vernon

The presidential library, officially known as The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. This library offers a great opportunity for scholars, employees of Mount Vernon, and also providing various special events to visitors. And if you can’t go to the Library to actually look at the collections, you can access some of them digitally from home. George Washington’s papers are available online for viewing by anyone. His papers cover everything from personal diaries to the Revolutionary War to the Presidential years.

The first special exhibit to be held at the Library is one focusing on George Washington as a reader. The exhibit looks at the types of books that Washington read – his primary focus was on politics, agriculture, religion, and military. You can read more about the exhibit here.

The library is absolutely gorgeous [you can check out more pictures here] and it is a new source of scholarship for those interested in the presidential history as well other Revolutionary period scholarship. If you want to know more about the library and stay up-to-date on events you can follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

There is also a short little video regarding the opening of the library and in discussion with the director.

I’m very impressed with this library.

 

Copyright © 2013 by The Maiden’s Court

Ranking Washington

Ranking the President’s of the United States can be a very complex endeavor – however the Siena Research Institute does it every few years or so. Their most recent results came out in 2010. They typically survey a large number of historians and politicos and ask them to rate the presidents on 20 different categories on a scale of 1 to 5. They then weigh these categories to come up with the overall result and compare.

As you can imagine, as the first, and iconic, president of the United States, George Washington tends to fall near the top every time a survey is given – for 2010 he is overall ranked #4 (just behind Lincoln!), but let’s take a look at where he fell in each category:

Background (family, education, experience): 7th
Party Leadership: 18th
Communication Ability (speaking, writing): 12th
Relationship with Congress: 3rd
Court Appointments: 3rd
Handling of US Economy: 4th
Luck: 1st
Ability to Compromise: 3rd
Willing to Take Risks: 4th
Executive Appointments: 1st
Overall Ability: 4th
Imagination: 9th
Domestic Accomplishments: 4th
Integrity: 2nd
Executive Ability: 2nd
Foreign Policy Accomplishments: 3rd
Leadership Ability: 1st
Intelligence: 12th
Avoid Crucial Mistakes: 1st
Your Present Overall View: 3rd

Overall Ranking: 4th

I think that this evaluation of Washington is pretty spot on. Being the first president you are sort of a shoe in for the luck, executive appointments, leadership, and avoiding crucial mistakes categories. The only ranking that I was a little bit surprised with was communication ability. Granted, I know that many of his speeches were written for him (whose aren’t these days?) but he is always described as being a commanding speaker. I would have thought it would have been a little higher. I also might have thought background might have been a little lower. He didn’t go to college and didn’t come from the elite class of landed gentry like many believe that he did. He was more of a learn as you go from your mistakes sort of guy. To make a comparison to Lincoln, it’s not surprising to me that in the categories where he was first or second, Lincoln typically had the other position – they both seem to go hand in hand in those categories.

What do you think of these rankings – agree/disagree? Most people have a decent working knowledge of Lincoln and Washington – who would you rank higher?


Data obtained from the 2010 Siena Research Institute's 5th Presidential Expert Poll. 2010.





Copyright © 2012 by The Maiden’s Court

A Visit to Mount Vernon: A Virtual Tour

Mount Vernon is the iconic home of our nation’s first President, George Washington. Over the course of his lifetime, Washington added on to the original structure to create what we see today. Mount Vernon is one of the three presidential homes that I would like to visit someday -along with Monticello, Jefferson’s home, and Montpelier, Madison’s home (which I will be visiting in a few short weeks!). Let’s take a little tour around the site and see what there is to do should you drop by for a visit!

If you don’t get a chance to get to the real thing there is a virtual tour of the site you can check out.

There is much to see and do at Mount Vernon – plan to spend a whole day there or more. So much to do that they provide you with an online planner to decide what you want to make sure you do and see! As this is a real working plantation the things to do change with the seasons. Among the places you can visit include the main home (1st and 2nd floors), gardens, fields, blacksmith shop, coach house, gardener’s house, greenhouse, kitchen, salt house, servant’s hall, slave quarters, smokehouse, stable, distillery, gristmill, and storehouse. Many of these places are peopled by costumed historical interpreters to answer your every question.

Aside from the living and working quarters you can visit the final resting places of George and Martha Washington. If you are lucky you might even be able to see a wreath laying ceremony. You can also visit the memorial to the slaves that lived and worked the Mount Vernon plantation.

There are many different tours that you can take around the different aspects of the plantation. You can take the National Treasure Tour to see where the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets was filmed. There is a Garden and Landscape Tour, Slave Life Tour, and Mount Vernon Civil War Tour. If you want a truly unique experience you can have Dinner with the Washingtons! You not only learn about what the Washington’s ate but you get to have a tasting at the end too. There is also a Mount Vernon Inn Restaurant where you are served by costumed interpreters and dine on colonial delicacies.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the wonderful things that you can do at Mount Vernon. You can explore more about visiting Mount Vernon or check out other various historical resources at the Mount Vernon website.

Have you ever been? Share with us you memories!





Copyright © 2012 by The Maiden’s Court

Audiobook Review: His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis

His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
Unabridged, 14 hr. 13 min.
Recorded Books
Nelson Runger (Narrator)
November 3, 2004
★★★★☆

Genre: Non Fiction, Biography

Source: Borrowed from my local library

“To this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mount Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose “statue-like solidity” concealed volcanic energies and emotions. 

Here is the impetuous young officer whose miraculous survival in combat half-convinced him that he could not be killed. Here is the free-spending landowner whose debts to English merchants instilled him with a prickly resentment of imperial power. We see the general who lost more battles than he won and the reluctant president who tried to float above the partisan feuding of his cabinet.”

Although there are a plethora of biographies out there on George Washington, this is the first one that I have read. I selected this particular titled primarily because I enjoyed the previous book I had read by this author, First Family: Abigail and John Adams. Ellis did justice to this great personage just as I expected that he would.

One of the things that I enjoyed most about this book was that Ellis was able to turn the myth into a man. When you think about or read about George Washington there are all of these lofty ideals and mythology that surrounds him. He is the man that made all of the right decisions and brought this country forward when it was struggling to survive. While still keeping high praise on Washington, Ellis brings to us a man who did not always know what the right answer was, lost more battles that he won, and ultimately did not want to be President of the United States. He made the first President much more approachable and someone who you could connect to in some ways – it can be hard when you can’t necessarily place yourself into his shoes.

The primary focus of this book is Washington’s military days. It was appreciated to learn about his time in the French and Indian War and the time before he became President, because you quite frankly can forget that those periods exist with all of the emphasis put on his American Revolution tenure and Presidency. His presidency was featured but not in nearly as much detail as his war days and it didn’t feel as if the author placed as much importance on it as these earlier periods in his life.

The one thing that I would have liked a little more of was his home life. I think about 2 sentences were spent on Martha and it was only really in passing. I’m sure that there was much more to their relationship. It could also be that not as much is known of their relationship as say John and Abigail Adams because Martha destroyed all of their letters to each other upon George’s death.

 

★★★★☆

I found the narration to be very well done. I enjoyed the narrator’s usage of different voices for the different people that were quoted. I find it easier to discern who is talking and separate it from the narrative.

You can listen to a short sample of the audiobook below (links to Audible):

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Man of La Book
• No Inklings
• My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | RJ Julia

Also by Joseph J. Ellis:

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

First Family: Abigail and John Adams
[My Review]

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies of the Founding of the Republic

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture

Find Joseph J. Ellis: Website | Facebook

Copyright © 2012 by The Maiden’s Court