Booklog: Revolutionary Figures

[nebroadwe]

The results of my latest biography kick, as follows:

Edward G. Lengel, General George Washington: A Military Life

A dispassionate view of an iconic American figure, this book's limited focus leaves room for lots of tasty detail and even-handed analysis. Lengel sees Washington as a conventional 18th-century military man -- always looking for the decisive engagement in the field against enemy forces -- whose genius lay not in his battlefield instincts but his dedication to getting the job done, his learned diplomatic and political skills, and his ability to inspire loyalty and an equal dedication in most of his officers. You don't have to be a military historian to read this with pleasure, but you do have to enjoy the academic dissection of strategy and tactics. Solid stuff.

Terry Golway, Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution

In the darkest hour of the Revolution, the fate of an emerging nation lay in the hands of one man, Washington's finest general, the young, sensitive, intelligent, dashing Nathanael Greene. An audio version of this biography would have to be read by the "In a world ..." voice-over guy, because that's the kind of prose Golway favors. Bleah. Worse, his work is facile -- he picks a few obvious themes and runs them into the ground, preferring broad-brush melodrama to detailed analysis of events and actors. This, my third go-round through the Boston-New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania phase of Revolutionary campaigning, added absolutely nothing to my understanding of events (in fact, I found myself critiquing Golway's failure to investigate Greene's role in the Americans' failed defense of New York more closely). Altogether too whizz-bang for my tastes.

Walter Stahr, John Jay: Founding Father

Among the larger-than-life figures of the American Revolution -- Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin et al. -- John Jay stands out by being, well, of normal proportions: a devout, conservative, diplomatic, intelligent man with a touch of the provincial about him, despite the fact that his most notable accomplishments (the Treaty of Paris and Jay's Treaty) derive from his service abroad. Stahr's biography is as sober-sided as its subject; it covers all the basics with thoroughness and rigor but no dash. The overwhelming emphasis is on Jay's public career; his family relationships (sadly, even his marriage to the intelligent and vivacious Sarah Livingston) get only a cursory glance -- a shame, since the few letters between John and Sarah which Stahr quotes show a private side to both parties which enlivens their portraits as public figures. More solid stuff, much better than Golway on Greene, but probably a slog for the non-academic reader.

Now I need to finish Snow White and the Seven Samurai, What the Dickens and Cotillion (not to mention Balance of Power and Living Room Space!) before Lent hits and I swear off fiction for the duration. Vrrrrrooooom!