Washington; The Indispensable Man
Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1974. First Back Bay Edition [stated]. Second printing [stated]. Trade paperback. xvii, [1], 423, [5] pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Bibliography. Index. Cover has some wear and bending/creasing. James Thomas Flexner (January 13, 1908 – February 13, 2003) was an American historian and biographer best known for the four-volume biography of George Washington that earned him a National Book Award in Biography and a special Pulitzer Prize. His one-volume abridgment, Washington: the Indispensable Man (1974) was the basis of two television miniseries, George Washington (1984) and George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation (1986), starring Barry Bostwick as Washington. James Thomas Flexner was born January 13, 1908. His father was Simon Flexner, who became director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City and discoverer of a cure for spinal meningitis. In 1929, Flexner graduated cum laude from Harvard University, and found work as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. In 1932, he left his job to devote his full energies to writing. Flexner wrote other historical biographies, including The Young Hamilton (on Alexander Hamilton), Mohawk Baronet (on Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet), and The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André. He wrote many books on the history of American art, including a highly regarded life of the American painter John Singleton Copley. He and his father, Simon Flexner, M.D., co-wrote William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine (1941). After more than two decades, this dramatic and concise single-volume distillation of James Thomas Flexner's definitive four-volume biography "George Washington," which received a Pulitzer Prize citation and a National Book Award for the fourth volume, has itself become an American classic. Now in a new trade paperback edition, this masterful work explores the Father of Our Country - sometimes an unpopular hero, a man of great contradictions, but always a towering historical figure, who remains, as Flexner writes in these pages, "a fallible human being made of flesh and blood and spirit - not a statue of marble and wood... a great and good man." The author unflinchingly paints a portrait of Washington: slave owner, brave leader, man of passion, reluctant politician, and fierce general. His complex character and career are neither glorified nor vilified here; rather, Flexner sets up a brilliant counterpoint between Washington's public and private lives and gives us a challenging look at the man who has become as much a national symbol as the American flag. Condition: Good / No dust jacket issued.
Keywords: Thomas Jefferson, American Revolution, Continental Army, Federalists, Martha Washington, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton
ISBN: 0316286168
[Book #85048]
Price: $28.50