You Never Forget Your First

"Great love stories don't often begin with dysentery."

It was that line on page 27 when I knew This was a presidential biography for me. To be fair, I knew I liked the book a few pages earlier, as the author described the previous canon of Washington biographies as written by "the thigh men" - men who are obsessed with writing about masculinity, specifically, the first president's thighs.

I love Alexis Coe's approach to this whole thing. Specifically, honoring the legacy of George Washington without sugarcoating it. I haven't read a lot of George Washington bios (read: I haven't read any), but apparently they all cast his mom as a shrew and him as the perfect man. This just felt more human, more honest, without discounting his role in the formation of our country.

Side note: I've watched Hamilton so many times, I pictured Chris Jackson throughout this book instead of the powdered-wig white guy with the non-wooden teeth (his teeth! You guys! I learned a lot of messed up things about his teeth. I won't spoil it too much, but HE BOUGHT SLAVE TEETH AND PUT THEM IN HIS OWN HEAD. And hippo tusks. Okay, I spoiled it all. Sorry.)

I felt like I walked away from this book knowing more about GW as the flawed human being that he certainly was. He failed many times before he succeeded. He failed after he was president, too. But, knowing those failures didn't take away from him on the historical pedestal. I actually appreciated it more.

Most poignant and important in this book is Coe's unflinching look at Washington's history with slavery. He owned people, which we all knew, of course. But, what has been glossed over through the centuries is that he never freed a single one. He left that up to Martha after his death. History - and, maybe the "thigh men" have chosen largely not to speak about it. But, to ignore it is to ignore the legacy that hangs over so many of our founding fathers.

This book is funny, smart, informative and even powerful at times.

I read this book a few weeks ago now, so I had to go back to my notes to remember everything. I wrote simply "last lines - perfect." In those last lines, Coe writes of the work being done at Mt Vernon to excavate the woods near the Washington burial vault. 

"The area is never mentioned in the thousands of documents Washington left behind. It is a cemetery for the people he enslaved, full of unmarked graves."