Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

by VideoGameKaiser

Hello historians I am here to ask you a rather simple question. How accurate is this biography? I have recent decided to read a biography on every US president up until our current one and I was wondering how good this one is. I have seen it recommended a ton but I would rather have some expert advice before I buy it. If you have any other biographies on other presidents I would be happy to take suggestions. Thanks in advance!

lord_mayor_of_reddit

You may be interested in this previous post of mine on biographies of George Washington.

The Chernow biography is generally well-regarded. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (Biography). Philander D. Chase, editor of the collected The Papers of George Washington, wrote a review of Chernow's book published in the Journal of American History, which concluded:

"Chernow’s insights and engaging prose make this book an excellent choice for any student or general reader of American history."

The New York Times and Washington Post both gave it good reviews, though the former gave some mild criticism that it could be "superficial" at times. Pulitzer Prize winning historian Gordon S. Wood wrote a review for the New York Review of Books and also gave it a positive review.

If your goal is to read a well-regarded and fairly thorough Washington biography, it's not a bad choice. Like anything, you would want to read a cross-section of different literature on Washington if your goal is to gain a well-balanced view of the academic literature. There are other books, specifically ones that focus on particular topics in Washington's life, that will be far more critical than Chernow. Among them are The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation by Colin G. Calloway, and Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

Chernow's isn't the only well-regarded Washington biography, either. Refer to the above-linked post for some others, including much longer ones but also abridged versions of those longer ones that are shorter than Chernow's.