PositiveThe Washington PostIn a masterfully drawn chapter, \'Biting the Hand,\' Stewart details the drama (and theatrics) of that critical relationship [between Washington and his patron Gov. Robert Dinwiddie]. His extensive coverage of Washington’s early professional experience is fitting, given the many documented lessons amassed from colonial-era relationships ... Following recent scholarship, the author underscores Washington’s complete acceptance of the institution of slavery ... The author straddles a line, uneasily granting a reprieve to one who made emancipation plans part of his final will ... Stewart’s recapitulation of the War for Independence and debates over the Constitution is unremarkable, and some of his speculations should raise eyebrows ... Is this book a corrective, remedying other scholars’ mistakes? No. Was this book necessary? No. Yet it is well-informed, intricate and straightforwardly told. While he gets carried away in places, Stewart uses an impressive range of sources, showing breadth and scholarly heft.
Lynne Cheney
PositiveThe Washington PostCheney, a former second lady of the United States, is a careful student of history with a discerning eye ... [Cheney] has an appealing narrative voice ... She writes of political passion dispassionately, with well-tempered anecdotes and salient facts ... the author does not play favorites and never obscures the founders’ flaws ... Throughout the book, secondary players help enrich Cheney’s story ... designed more to engage than to break new ground. The author elects not to tap treatments of the founding era by a rising generation of professional historians who give pronounced attention to political energies bubbling up from below. Still, the narrative offers informed, exacting characterizations of the uncertain political alliances, strained interactions and ideological growing pains that elites of the post-revolutionary decades put the country through. As a work of history, the book is a disciplined, agreeably constructed synthesis. As a human interest story it is no less agreeable.
