For King and Country: George Washington: The Early Years

"A daring book . . . a terrific story and Lewis tells it with rare narrative skill . . . a superb writer, with a startling command of the historian's art and a powerful interest in the moral aspects that history has always claimed. He also has in the young George Washington a subject of unfailing centrality and importance. His flaws, like those of any human figure worth his salt and worth our time, constitute the ground of his enduring human achievements." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "The story is compelling and Lewis tells it well." --Library Journal "Gracefully and attractively written." --Chicago Tribune For King and Country is a portrait of an ordinary young man enmeshed in extraordinary events: the young George Washington caught up, and striving to excel, amid the bitter rivalry between the French and British for control of the American colonial frontier in the mid-eighteenth century. Drawing heavily on Washington's own diaries, letters, and dispatches, Thomas A. Lewis follows the future president's remarkable rise from a callow young man with no inheritance, no trade, and few prospects to the respected commander-in-chief of the military forces of British America's foremost colony.… (more)