His Excellency: George Washington

This is in many ways an unsympathetic look at our first President. I say unsympathetic in that I think Washington's life and presidency is judged equitably here when I think the tendency in most historical books I've ever read (admittedly for a younger audience) is to canonize a great man and gloss over his faults. I actually did not know much about his early life. Even though this book is a shorter overview, it's covered in some depth and sets up the core aspects of his personality and how it drove his decisions during the Revolutionary War and establishment of the Presidency.