![]() ![]() ![]() And, because it’s a biography, George Washington remains at the center. (Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Washington was an astounding 904 pages.) But Coe’s offering is still a full biography, covering birth to death and the highlights of his life and career between. While “weighty tome” is the typical format for founder’s biographies, this one comes in at just 304 lively pages. Coe sets herself apart from the historians she refers to as the “Thigh Men” of history: biographers like Joseph Ellis, Harlow Giles Unger, and Ron Chernow, esteemed writers in their own rights but ones who seemingly focus on Washington as a marble Adonis (with impressive thighs-we’ll get to that), rather than as a flawed, but still impressive, human being.Ĭoe mixes up genre and presentation, beginning with a preface composed of listicles, with the first a set of basic things to know about Washington (“jobs held”). ![]() Starting with its cover illustration, a playful Washington grinning at the reader, You Never Forget Your First is a wink of sorts, at Washington biography and at the ways that Americans have very consistently misremembered the first president. ![]() No one would describe Alexis Coe’s unconventional biography of conventional biographical subject George Washington as boring. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |