Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father - Hardcover

Stark, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062416065 ISBN 13: 9780062416063

Publisher: Ecco, 2018

Synopsis

A new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of Astoria

Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War—a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution.

With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. 

By weaving together Washington’s harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.

About this title

From the Author:

I stumbled on the Young Washington story by happenstance, in the curious and delightful way in which one literary project can unexpectedly lead to another.   Over a decade ago I was researching my book "The Last Empty Places" (2010).  I was interested in the most unpopulated, still-wild places of the United States, outside of Alaska.  At the suggestion of a geographer friend who is an expert in GIS technology, I obtained a NASA satellite photo of the U.S. at night, and instead of looking at the clusters of lights that were cities, I looked at the darkest, blankest spots on the photo.  My plan was to visit and "profile" four of these areas - two in the West and two in the East.     One of these "blank spots" happened to be Western Pennsylvania.  It's surprising to anyone who hasn't been there that a region so close to the densely peopled Eastern Seaboard could be so mountainous and wilderness-like.  As I explored the area and its history, I kept coming across references to a twenty-something George Washington, who had made several expeditions as a young man from the coastal plantations of Virginia into the Ohio Valley wilderness and what is now Western Pennsylvania.  Some of these were harrowing winter adventures, others were military expeditions, some led by young Washington himself, that turned out badly.  He seemed to be a struggling young man prone to misadventures and mistakes - as so many males have been as young men, myself included.  Yet it also became clear he had acquired deep experience in the wilderness - something I didn't know about our first president.  The young Washington seemed a far more human and vulnerable and accessible character than the majestic, remote, Father of Our Country whose great deeds so many of us heard growing up.     Having written a great deal previously about the wilderness and humans putting themselves in extreme situations, this side of George Washington came to fascinate me.  I wanted to understand this Washington that existed before the legends grew up around him - the Washington struggling to find his way in the wilderness, and as an individual in the world.  I hoped that the story of how he eventually found his way would serve as a powerful lesson to us all.

From the Inside Flap:

       A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the events leading to American independence, from the bestselling author of Astoria.       

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0062416065
• ISBN 13: 9780062416063
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 528