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  • Man and Monument:New Books on Washington Fail to Stand Tall
  • Jeffrey J. Malanson (bio)
John Rhodehamel. George Washington: The Wonder of the Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. 353 pp. Notes and index. $32.50.
John Avlon. Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. 354 pp. Illustrations, appendices, notes, and index. $27.00.

George Washington is one of the most well-studied (some might say over-studied) figures in history. While it is something of a cliché to begin a book review by noting the abundance of Washington scholarship the world has already been graced with, it is important to remember the crowded field into which John Rhodehamel and John Avlon are entering with their books on his life and legacy. Recent Washington scholarship has placed a premium on demythologizing and humanizing the "father of his country" in order to better understand the "real" George Washington. Rhodehamel and Avlon eschew the humanizing trend, opting instead to emphasize Washington's larger-than-life qualities and monumental achievements. Rhodehamel explains in his introduction that Washington's "identification with the new republic was so complete, and his heroic character so carefully contrived, that it is unlikely that the 'real' Washington will ever escape the obscuring embrace of myth" (p. 8). Washington's "greatness," Rhodehamel argues, "is to be found in his public achievements, and those achievements are authentically monumental. So the man must remain a monument" (p. 9). Whether man or monument, Rhodehamel and Avlon largely fail to contribute anything new to our understanding of Washington and his legacy, with the former writing an at-times excellent but on balance unremarkable biography, and the latter offering little more than a list of historical curiosities lacking meaning or substance.

The opening chapters of Rhodehamel's George Washington: The Wonder of the Age, which generally reads as a briskly paced greatest hits collection of Washington's life, are the strongest of the book. They focus on Washington's early life and service in the French and Indian War. Rhodehamel does an excellent job situating the young Washington within colonial, imperial, and [End Page 32] historical contexts that help to illuminate how it was possible for Washington to begin making a name for himself on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean "at an uncommonly early age" (p. 13). His ambition and relationships (especially with his half-brother Lawrence and with the wealthy Fairfax family) primed Washington for quick advancement beyond what his family's modest means and standing would normally allow. Washington's early life, in Rhodehamel's telling, can be read as a case study in historical contingency. Lawrence Washington married into the Fairfax family, the Fairfaxes brought George Washington on a month-long surveying expedition into their western lands in 1748 (when he was only sixteen years old), and got him a job as the Surveyor of Culpepper County the following year. In January 1752, Washington met with Virginia's royal governor, Robert Dinwiddie, in order to lay the groundwork for receiving a commission in November 1752 as adjutant of the militia for the Southern District at the rank of major. This posting was only possible because the adjutant general of the Virginia militia, Lawrence Washington, died that July and his office was divided into four posts, one of which went to George. In October 1753, when King George II commanded the French to leave the Ohio country, George Washington, with his military appointment and frontier experience, was the natural person to lead the diplomatic mission to deliver the king's command. If any link in that chain of events had been broken, world history might be different.

Rhodehamel devotes one-third of his book to Washington's rise through the ranks, his successes and failures before and during the French and Indian War, and his inability to secure a commission in the British army. Across these pages, Rhodehamel portrays Washington as an ambitious, confident (and overconfident), and generally competent (though certainly not always) young man and soldier. Historians have frequently suggested that the young and inexperienced Washington, who did not speak a word of French, was a poor choice to serve...

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