Travels with George

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ΓÇ£Travels with George . . . is quintessential PhilbrickΓÇöa lively,courageousand masterful achievement.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇöThe Boston Globe Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for WashingtonΓÇÖs unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonieswhich were now an unsure nation. Travels with George marks a new first-person voice for Philbrickweaving history and personal reflection into a single narrative. When George Washington became president in 1789the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new governmentand to imbue in them the idea of being one thingΓÇöAmericans. In the fall of 2018Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called ΓÇ£the infant woody countryΓÇ¥ to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his wifeMelissaand their dogDoraPhilbrick follows WashingtonΓÇÖs presidential excursions: from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York; a monthlong tour of ConnecticutMassachusettsNew Hampshireand Rhode Island; a venture onto Long Island and eventually across GeorgiaSouth Carolinaand North Carolina. The narrative moves smoothly between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries as we see the country through both WashingtonΓÇÖs and PhilbrickΓÇÖs eyes. Written at a moment when AmericaΓÇÖs founding figures are under increasing scrutinyTravels with George grapples bluntly and honestly with WashingtonΓÇÖs legacy as a man of the peoplea reluctant presidentand a plantation owner who held people in slavery. At historic houses and landmarksPhilbrick reports on the reinterpretations at work as he meets reenactorstour guidesand other keepers of historyΓÇÖs flame. He paints a picture of eighteenth-century America as divided and fraught as it is todayand he comes to understand how Washington compelledenticedstood up toand listened to the many different people he met along the wayΓÇöand how his all-consuming belief in the union helped to forge a nation.