The Making of the Prefident 1789: The Unauthorized Campaign Biography - Softcover

Kitman, Marvin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802137350 ISBN 13: 9780802137357

Publisher: Grove Press, 2000

Synopsis

George Washington was said to be "First in War, First in Peace." In The Making of the President 1789, humorist Marvin Kitman argues that our first president was also the first American leader to ride his personal foibles to political greatness. Kitman lampoons the modern "campaign insider" books, asking: "How is it possible that a man with no military experience becomes a general? He loses more battles than he wins and becomes a war hero? He has absolutely no political opinions in the most sophisticated intellectual period of our history? He has no ambitions, and he wins?" Through careful research, Kitman exposes Washington's weaknesses for social climbing and high-stakes whist and his relationships with the Founding Girlfriends.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

A biography of George Washington like none other, this revealing portrait brings the sanctified first president down to human scale. Iconoclast Kitman ( George Washington's Expense Account ) portrays him as an incompetent war general, a wheeler-dealer, a land-grabber, "an intimate of every major financial crook and market manipulator." We are told that Prefident Washington (to use the colonial typography) autocratically opposed a multi-party system, and that his elevation from Virginia planter to leader was engineered by a Mount Vernon political machine. Kitman piles on whimsy and clever anachronisms in an effort to lighten the strong populist thrust of his portrayal. There is also much about Washington's false modesty, his drinking habits, his womanizing and his extravagant personal spending even when in debt.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0802137350
• ISBN 13: 9780802137357
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368