A legend in his own lifetime, acknowledged by the other Founding Fathers as their superior, George Washington remains the most celebrated figure in the pantheon of the American Revolution. In this acclaimed biography, however, historian Joseph Ellis goes far beyond the ubiquitous image to bring new insight into ‘America’s greatest secular saint’. Ellis’s aim was to create ‘not another epic, but rather a fresh portrait focused tightly on Washington’s character’. The result is a landmark work, authoritative and revealing of both the man and the fragile, nascent state over which he presided.

Ellis explores Washington’s formative years, from his upbringing as a gentleman in Virginia to his early military career. ‘My inclinations’, Washington wrote after his first experiences in the French-Indian War, ‘are strongly bent to arms’. After the war, he settled down to managing his estates and playing his full part as a prominent Virginian landowner. In 1775, as the Revolutionary War loomed, Washington was called upon to lead the colony’s militia units, a role which ultimately led to command of the Continental army. These perilous years proved to be what Ellis calls ‘the crucible for his development as a mature man, a prominent statesman and a national hero’. While Ellis naturally focuses on Washington’s terms as president and his attempts to balance the factionalism that followed, he never neglects the private side of Washington’s life. It is here that we gain the truest sense of a man genuinely capable of self-discipline and denial in the pursuit of what he believed to be the greater good.

Today the United States of America is a global powerhouse, yet when it first secured independence, many doubted that this new nation would endure. The vision and dedication of America's first leaders proved them wrong.

This collection of America's founding fathers includes the extraordinary lives of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. These authoritative, modern biographies reveal individuals who were passionate in their convictions, dedicated to their ideals, and yet, for all their brilliance, often flawed human beings. Fascinating portraits, they evoke the troubled, tumultuous times in which they lived, when the spirit of revolution was in the air.