François Furstenberg

This history aimed to unpack the legacy of George Washington, with a particular focus on how early Americans conceptualized his attitudes towards slavery. Washington himself, of course, was largely mute on the topic, and only taking action on his deathbed to free his slaves (under such conditions that most were not emancipated for some time). The Americans of the early United States, however, eagerly venerated Washington and enshrined his life and character in children's schoolbooks, statutes, and artwork. They needed to find a way to reconcile the ideals Washington supposedly embodied with the fact that he owned slaves and multiple conceptualizations were created to grapple with this contradiction. This book is academic in many ways, but it's helpful for understanding how early Americans were thinking about their form of government, the existence of slavery and the moral problems it posed to the nation, and how the figure of Washington fit into the national narrative. While certainly not the definitive book on the subject, this book offers perspective and insight into a difficult area of American history.… (altro)

Somewhat hi brow, repetitious, scary and boring for me.
Hi brow - because the writer got too intellectual for most of the book; intellectual in his choice of language and syntax such that I found it hard to stay focused on most of what he had to say.
Repetitious - in that I found myself able to go away from the book while it was still being read and come back a few minutes later to find it appeared not to have moved along at all.
Scary - in that I found myself disgusted with the early Americans who had been quoted and with their "me-me, I-I" systems of logic that excluded anything that was not about them as individuals or that might impinge on their own pursuits of happiness, and, because the author believes that much of what is accepted as "the American culture" is derived from a romanticized, manufactured biography (version 9) of George Washington by one Mason L. Weems.
Boring - because of the repetitiveness I think I noted and for the large number of words used before coming to any sort of conclusion.
The book wasn't for me. I prefer to think better of Americans than they were, and are, portrayed here. Of course, I could be wrong and he could be right. Shudder the thought.… (altro)