The World of George Washington

From the cover: Frontiersman, general, statesman, president, aristocrat, gentleman, farmer -- Washington was all of these things and more. Richard Ketchum, the renowned Revolutionary historian, has peeled away two centuries of apocryphal stories, finally revealing the man behind the legend. The World of George Washington truly re-creates the age Washington lived in. Every painting and piece of memorabilia that appears between these covers were in existence during Washington's lifetime. Here are portraits painted by the men he sat for, the maps he read, the mess kit he carried, the pictures he looked at, and the surveying instruments he used. And the narrative that they accompany has been drawn from the eyewitness accounts of men and women who knew this extraordinary man. This is Washington before the myths began: a man still controversial enough to provoke John Adams into complaining that he was "too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation." Yet the young Lafay