The Unexpected George Washington: His Private Life - Hardcover

by Harlow Giles Unger (Author)

Advance Praise for The Unexpected George Washington

""This is a biography that unquestionably lives up to its title. Readers will discover numerous, often touching traits that they never knew about the Father of the Country. Harlow Unger has written a one-of-a-kind book that will please and fascinate everyone.""
--Thomas Fleming, author Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge

""It's hard to imagine George Washington as playful, tender, or funny. But Harlow Unger searches to find these seldom-seen aspects of the private man, and the result is a far more complete and believable founding father.""
-- James C. Rees, Executive Director, Historic Mount Vernon

Acclaim for Lafayette

""Harlow Unger has cornered the market on muses to emerge as America's most readable historian. His new biography of the Marquis de Lafayette combines a thoroughgoing account of the age of revolution, a probing psychological study of a complex man, and a literary style that goes down like cream.""
--Florence King, contributing editor, National Review

""To American readers Unger's biography will provide a stark reminder of just how near run a thing was our War of Independence and the degree to which our forefathers' victory hinged on the help of our French allies, marshalled for George Washington by his 'adopted' son, Lafayette.""
--Larry Collins, coauthor, Is Paris Burning? and O Jerusalem!

""An admirable account of his [Lafayette's] life and extraordinary career on both sides of the Atlantic.""
-- The Sunday Telegraph (London)

Front Jacket

Here, at last, is an engaging close-up look at the private George Washington. Acclaimed as "America's most readable historian," Harlow Giles Unger reveals the humor, warmth, and genius of the intensely human man behind the stern presidential portraits and the stone face at Mount Rushmore. Washington was a passionate man who laughed, loved, and lived life to the full; he adored women, children, plants and flowers, hunting, gambling, fine wines, and luxuries of every kind. A dashing giant of a man, he was the greatest horseman of his day, yet his social graces left ladies swooning as he spun them around the ballroom--and his funny tales left children convulsing with giggles as he bounced them gently on his knee.

More than Franklin, more than Jefferson, Washington was a genius--a scientist, inventor, architect, scholar, and entrepreneur. His brilliant intellect and ingenuity pioneered advances in agriculture, botany, animal husbandry, architecture, and mechanics that revolutionized American farming for the next century--and left us the uniquely American architectural masterpiece that stands at Mount Vernon.

Left fatherless at eleven, Washington instinctively reached out to children in the same strait, befriending, harboring, often raising as his own the nieces, nephews, and children of relatives or friends, including his wife Martha's two children by her first husband and two of her grandchildren. Even in war, he nurtured the young, encouraging and training junior officers for leadership--and all but adopting the young Marquis de Lafayette as "my own son."

Drawing on private letters, diaries, and neglected primary sources, Unger introduces the Father of Our Country as a glorious, thoroughly human person few Americans know existed: a man who bellowed at the misbehavior of his spoiled grandson, but shed uncontrollable tears at the death of Martha's two children--and embraced Lafayette's sixteen-year-old son as his own when the boy fled bloodthirsty French revolutionaries to seek safe haven at Mount Vernon.

The Unexpected George Washington is also a thrilling love story--a deep, lifelong romance marked by tragedy and danger, but filled with boundless happiness and mutual understanding. Martha shared George's love of dancing, theater, concerts, expensive clothes, fine furnishings, and lavish dinners--and she put up with his passions for drink, cards, horse racing, hunting, and bawdy jokes. Both reveled in the society of relatives, friends, and small children, and Martha filled their mansion with all three. Generous, hospitable, concerned for others, Washington left all who knew or met him in awe. Then, as now, he inspired trust, loyalty, love, and reverence.

Back Jacket

Advance Praise for "The Unexpected George Washington"

"This is a biography that unquestionably lives up to its title. Readers will discover numerous, often touching traits that they never knew about the Father of the Country. Harlow Unger has written a one-of-a-kind book that will please and fascinate everyone."
--Thomas Fleming, author "Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge"

"It's hard to imagine George Washington as playful, tender, or funny. But Harlow Unger searches to find these seldom-seen aspects of the private man, and the result is a far more complete and believable founding father."
-- James C. Rees, Executive Director, Historic Mount Vernon

Acclaim for Lafayette

"Harlow Unger has cornered the market on muses to emerge as America's most readable historian. His new biography of the Marquis de Lafayette combines a thoroughgoing account of the age of revolution, a probing psychological study of a complex man, and a literary style that goes down like cream."
--Florence King, contributing editor, "National Review"

"To American readers Unger's biography will provide a stark reminder of just how near run a thing was our War of Independence and the degree to which our forefathers' victory hinged on the help of our French allies, marshalled for George Washington by his 'adopted' son, Lafayette."
--Larry Collins, coauthor, "Is Paris Burning?" and "O Jerusalem!"

"An admirable account of his [Lafayette's] life and extraordinary career on both sides of the Atlantic."
-- "The Sunday Telegraph" (London)

Author Biography

HARLOW GILES UNGER is a graduate of Yale University and the author of fifteen books, including the award-winning Lafayette, as well as biographies of John Hancock and Noah Webster. A veteran journalist, he was an editor at the New York Herald Tribune Overseas News Service in Paris and a foreign correspondent for the "Times" and the "Sunday Times," London.