He succeeds handsomely, depicting an irreducibly complicated figure. Chernow's goal is to humanize Washington. Chernow pumps up descriptions as if he were Stan Lee writing about Spider-Man. At times, cliches and dead phrases rustle noisily on the path. He attains this despite an uneven prose style. There were moments on my march to the end of his story on when I thought he could have shortened the trip, yet I still felt that the writing was purposeful, not merely encyclopedic. In organically unifying Washington's private and public lives, he accomplishes a feat that eludes many biographers. That speaks to the triumph of Chernow's narrative structure, the depth of his research and how alive he is to the emotional content of dry material. A reader might agree with my criticisms yet thoroughly enjoy the book. Like Washington's teeth, his life as told here is less than fully rooted in its surroundings. But the very intimacy of the story hints at this book's limitations. He had human teeth, which he bought from slaves, who pulled them from their own mouths.Here we see the strengths of this biography: the interweaving of the inner and outer man a sensitivity to the impact of a seemingly minor matter the juxtaposition of a civic saint with the trade in human flesh (or calcium, in this case). George Washington did not have wooden teeth. His understanding of human nature is extraordinary and that is what makes his biography so powerful. He has no ax to grind his only object seems to be to render his subject as fully and as roundly as possible. Chernow has written his biography with sympathetic detachment, keenly aware of the limitations of life. It is Chernow’s well-paced and readable prose and the smooth organization of his story together with the sensible and impartial nature of his judgments that make the book so persuasive. Although there is nothing really original in this characterization, no one before has ever put together between two covers such a convincing depiction of the great man. One comes away from the book feeling that Washington has finally become comprehensible.
Because he also has a feel for the contentious historical issues in the lives of his characters, his book ought to satisfy academic historians as well as the general readers who may be unaware of these issues. Ability to master the secondary sources as well as the primary materials is the secret of his remarkable success as a biographer.
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