Washington

"It’s the closest thing we have to a definitive account of Washington’s life. Freeman was a fan—there is no doubt about that. He was a Virginian, and he identified with the greatest Virginian in history. It was a labour of love. Freeman was a full-time journalist; he was the editor of a paper in Richmond, VA. Nonetheless, he found time to write seven volumes on Washington. I won’t say that the facts speak entirely for themselves in Freeman’s work; he marshals the facts, but he mainly writes from the perspective that the more we know, the more we’ll understand the great man. If you have the time and the leisure, it’s the best way to get to know Washington. Freeman wrote in the age of segregation. He didn’t subject the fact that Washington was a slaveholder to the kind of scrutiny that historians do today."