George Washington, heroic general of the Revolution, master ofMount Vernon, and first president of the United States, remains the most enigmaticfigure of the founding generation, with historians and the public at large stillarguing over the strengths of his character and the nature of his intellectual andpolitical contributions to the early republic. Representing the finest recentscholarship on Washington, these thirteen essays by the leading scholars in thefield strike a balance between Washington's personal life and character and hispublic life as a soldier and political figure. Editor Don Higginbotham provides anintroduction about Washington and his treatment by historians, and an afterworddevoted to how the American people have viewed Washington, including the 1999commemorations of the bicentennial of his death. With three essays writtenspecifically for this volume, George Washington Reconsidered is the first collectionof its kind to be published in over thirty years.