Young Washington
How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father
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- ¥1,500
発行者による作品情報
A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the history of American independence, from the bestselling author of Astoria
Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naive and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War—a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution.
With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships.
By weaving together Washington’s harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stark (Astoria) puts his background as an adventure writer to good use, bringing thrilling immediacy and literary flair to George Washington's youthful exploits as a Western surveyor and eventual participant in the French and Indian War. Tracing Washington's development from ambitious young soldier to disciplined military leader, Stark treats his subject's life as an opportunity to delve into the customs of colonial society, America's involvement in global power struggles between the French and English, and complex negotiations between colonists and Native Americans. The young Washington, inexperienced and fueled by an intense desire to make a name for himself, finds himself at the heart of these conflicts: in his eagerness to expand British holdings by evicting the French from the Ohio territory, he makes rash decisions that escalate fighting between France and England, as well as between colonial and British officers. Stark narrates Washington's move toward greater self-control in three major sections, each of which focuses on a particular episode of the French and Indian War. While Stark did not conduct significant original research and often turns to imaginative speculation about Washington's thoughts, his novelistic account is sure to entertain readers interested in the backstory of America's first president.
