George Washington: A Biography.

FREEMAN, Douglas Southall.

Item Number: 138655

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948-1951.

First editions of the first four volumes in the historian’s 1958 Pulitzer Prize-winning work. Octavo, four volumes, original cloth, cartographic endpapers, illustrated. In near fine condition. Housed in the rare original publisher’s slipcases.

In 1948 biographer and military historian Douglas Southall Freeman won his second Pulitzer Prize for his new and dramatic reexamination of George Washington. For years biographies had gone from idolatry to muckraking in their depictions of this somewhat marbleized Founding Father. Freeman’s new interpretation was a fresh step, making Washington a living, breathing individual, flawed but heroic. An able commander who defeated the British Empire against incredible odds, Washington proved to be just as adept at wielding political power, and adroitly steered our new loosely called nation through the first stormy years of our unproven federal stewardship and the first two presidential administrations. The work remains perhaps the most complete, definitive biography of George Washington ever written.