American Patriarch

“With this masterly volume, Brands has further solidified his standing as one of our nation’s greatest historians. American Patriarch is by turns brilliant and bold. Brands demonstrates compellingly that Washington’s greatness was as visible in the moment as it has been to scholars across the two centuries since. Read today, in a moment of both historical commemoration and national soul-searching, Brands documents just how extraordinary—and essential—George Washington was and remains.”
—Justin Vaughn, founder and director of the Presidential Greatness Project

“In American Patriarch, Brands deftly weaves into his narrative extensive excerpts from diaries, letters, speeches and publications, providing unequaled insight into what Washington saw, heard, read, thought and did during crucial points in his life and the life of the new nation he did more than anyone else to create.”
—George R. Goethals, University of Richmond professor emeritus

“The prolific historian takes on the first among equals of the Founding Fathers. . . . The one biography of Washington to read in this semiquicentennial year.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[An] immersive biography. . . . This detailed character study reveals a Washington who manifested his own myth.”
—Publishers Weekly