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Rating: 
Summary: Someone we all need to know better
Review: In an era when Americans seem to be quickly losing touch with their own history, one of the greatest crimes of all is that the name of George Mason has faded into almost complete obscurity (if there weren't a university named after him in Virginia, how much worse would it be?).In his foreword to this brief book, Dumas Malone, the biographer of Jefferson, notes what a shame this is: 'More than any other single American, except possibly Thomas Jefferson, whom in some sense he anticipated, George Mason may be regarded as the herald of this new era [of declarations of rights]; and in our own age, when the rights of individual human beings are being challenged by totalitarianism around the world, men can still find inspiration in his noble words.' Biographies of Mason, the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (which inspired, among other things, the US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen) are woefully few. Rutland's short book is a fine and easily digestible introduction to the man, his times, and his impact upon history. The value of that is hard to overstate.
Rating: 
Summary: Accessible Introduction to Lesser Known Revolutionary
Review: This is an accessible introduction to George Mason, a Revolutionary Virginian of lesser fame. The book is very short and the print rather large, making this an easy read. Robert Rutland dwells mostly on Mason's public life, only hinting at his private life. Like Jefferson, Mason was a slaveholder who abhorred slavery (he wished the Constitutional Convention had abolished it), but Rutland leaves this paradox unexplored. For those of a scholarly bent, the book lacks footnotes. Mason was the moving force behind Virginia's Declaration of Rights, and, for that reason alone, is quite significant. Any person wishing to learn more about him will find this book a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Accessible Introduction to Lesser Known Revolutionary
Review: This is an accessible introduction to George Mason, a Revolutionary Virginian of lesser fame. The book is very short and the print rather large, making this an easy read. Robert Rutland dwells mostly on Mason's public life, only hinting at his private life. Like Jefferson, Mason was a slaveholder who abhorred slavery (he wished the Constitutional Convention had abolished it), but Rutland leaves this paradox unexplored. For those of a scholarly bent, the book lacks footnotes. Mason was the moving force behind Virginia's Declaration of Rights, and, for that reason alone, is quite significant. Any person wishing to learn more about him will find this book a good place to start.
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