His Excellency, Joseph J. Ellis
His Excellency, Joseph J. Ellis
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His Excellency
George Washington

Author: Joseph J. Ellis

Narrator: Nelson Runger

Unabridged: 14 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 11/03/2004

Synopsis

To this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mount Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose "statue-like solidity" concealed volcanic energies and emotions. Here is the impetuous young officer whose miraculous survival in combat half-convinced him that he could not be killed. Here is the free-spending landowner whose debts to English merchants instilled him with a prickly resentment of imperial power. We see the general who lost more battles than he won and the reluctant president who tried to float above the partisan feuding of his cabinet. His Excellency is a magnificent work, indispensable to an understanding not only of its subject but also of the nation he brought into being.

About Joseph J. Ellis

Joseph J. Ellis is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award, and Founding Brothers, which won the Pulitzer Prize

Reviews

Goodreads review by John on October 08, 2012

This was the first of two books I'm currently reading about George Washington. As part of my 2-year quest to read the top two biographies of each of our 43 U.S. Presidents, I began with this and Ron Chernow's behemoth "Washington: A Life," a far more comprehensive treatment. Initially I preferred Che......more

Goodreads review by Paul on February 22, 2025

His excellence in all things is so much a matter of record that, in the American imagination, he has lost much of his humanity. George Washington was the general who led the Continental Army to a seemingly impossible victory over British forces, at a time when Great Britain was the world’s sole supe......more

Goodreads review by Michael on November 20, 2019

After thoroughly enjoying Dallek's 2017 biography about FDR, I wanted to go back and read about the other two of the Big Three, Washington and Lincoln. Reading here and there on the web, I understood that Joseph Ellis' His Excellency: George Washington - following his excellent Pulitzer-winning Foun......more

Goodreads review by Nate on February 07, 2008

In "His Excellency," Joseph Ellis has written a very readable and concise synopsis on the life of George Washington. Though more recognizable for his works "Founding Brothers" and "American Sphinx" (about Thomas Jefferson), Ellis successfully undertakes the task of illuminating probably the most imp......more

Goodreads review by Brian on October 29, 2022

I found this to be an unusually good biography where the author's work would have stand out even on an ordinary subject. Combine the timeless imminence of Washington with the Ellis ability to research and boil down a massive historical record and the kind of astuteness at finding psychological patte......more

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