Posted on 11/13/2004 4:21:18 PM PST by petitfour
IN a historical profession that is scornful of what it calls dead white males, Joseph J. Ellis has emerged as an eloquent champion and brilliant practitioner of the old-fashioned art of biography. He concentrates mainly upon the founders of the American republic, and while those who have particular favorites among the founders may cavil at his interpretations, Ellis has a gift for getting inside the skins of his subjects and showing what made them tick.
Now he has taken on the greatest and most enigmatic founder. To describe George Washington as enigmatic may strike some as strange, for every young student knows about him (or did when students could be counted on to know anything). He was born into a minor family in Virginia's plantation gentry, worked as a surveyor in the West as a young man, was a hero of sorts during the French and Indian War, became an extremely wealthy planter (after marrying a rich widow), served as commander in chief of the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War (including the terrible winter at Valley Forge), defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown, suppressed a threatened mutiny by his officers at Newburgh, N.Y., then astonished the world and won its applause by laying down his sword in 1783. Called out of retirement, he presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, reluctantly accepted the presidency in 1789 and served for two terms, thus assuring the success of the American experiment in self-government.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Don't put money in the pocket of a guy like Ellis. He might be a meticulous historian,
but he's a walking embodiment of "Stolen Valor" in his personal life.
Get the GREAT book on Washington by Flexner:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316286168/qid=1100391737/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-4021510-7523204
Note in the reviews the endorsement by Doug McIntyre...one of the few Republicans/conservatives
in Hollywood. After about four years with a great late night show on KABC 790AM
http://www.kabc.com
in Los Angeles, he's just taken the reins of morning drive.
from...
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882229.html
Joseph Ellis,
historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, admitted in June that he led his students at
Mount Holyoke College to believe that he had served as a paratrooper in Vietnam,
when in reality his three years of service had been spent teaching history at the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
He was also accused of embellishing his role in the civil rights and antiwar movements.
He was subsequently suspended from Mount Holyoke for one year without pay and
stripped of his endowed chair. Ellis won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for history for
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. In a statement Ellis said,
“I deeply regret having let stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to
Vietnam. For this and any other distortions about my personal life, I want to apologize
to my family, friends, colleagues, and students.”
Not entirely accurate, but I can't tell if it's the biographer's opinion or the reviewer's. True, Martha was a very wealthy widow, but at the time he married her, George had inherited Mt. Vernon and was rather well off himself. It had belonged to his half-brother, who had married into the Fairfax family, and I think the land came from Lord Fairfax. The half-brother died, then his widow, then their young daughter, and Washington was the next in line to inherit. Anyway, he wasn't a John Kerry, if that's the intention of the reviewer.
This looks like a good place to ask the following question:
What would you recommend for a 12-year-old boy whose teachers in public school are VERY big on teaching the "old, rich white men" who founded this country to the detriment of the poor?
Help! My grandson is being brain washed.
Forrest McDonald is most definitely NOT a leftie. lol He was a professor of mine, and he is very, very conservative. I'd say he is a paleocon, and it would be accurate because he is an old conservative. However, since the term has been hijacked by Pat Buchanan, I will just call him a conservative. The impression I have of his opinion of this biography is that it is a decent work, but not overly impressive.
I have not read the book, but I did look at a copy earlier today. All I can say about that is that the cover is pretty. :)
Regarding Ellis, Washington's new biographer -- YIKES. I remember hearing about this case. Thanks.
My all-time favorite:
"Patriarch : George Washington and the New American Nation"
by Richard Norton Smith
I'll give the Ellis volume a try though.
(note to self: read thread first, then comment)
And, yes, I'm also surprised that he would praise Ellis for anything.
Ellis had been one of those who dismissed the allegations that Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' children...until just before the November 1998 elections when that DNA study came out that showed that at least some of her descendants had the Jefferson "Y chromosome" (not necessarily inherited from Jefferson himself as his brother or his Jefferson male cousins could equally well have been the source of the chromosome). Ellis suddenly jumped on the Jefferson-had-children-by-Sally-Hemings bandwagon.
Apparently the publication date of that DNA study had been moved up to help Clinton by diminishing Jefferson's reputation.
Thank you for the heads up. Hard to believe the Slimes would allow a conservative reviewer of books.
Thank you, Californiajones. I'll look for it.
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