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Summary: A River Runs Through It: GW and What America Was To Be
Review: Joel Achenbach's The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West is an elegant fusion of American business history, presidential biography, and geography, told as a good and gripping story. Achenbach does a remarkable thing in this book: he explores an important theme - George Washington's ambitions for what the young republic should become when it grew up -- without the weighty tone of scholarship typical of such treatments. The book has a charming, almost conversational style which reveals the contradictions, ambiguities and tensions in the life of Washington and his peers in their messy humanity and the rough social reality of their contemporary context. Achenbach is a witty, insightful and incredibly competent sherpa through this landscape and history; he never lets his prose eclipse the inherent drama of the story. And he stops the narrative now and then to chat with the reader on the matter at hand, as in this passage on historical interpretation: .... All of which is a reminder that history is not an exact science and at moments is more like a séance, a desperate attempt, in the mist and fog, to channel the voices of the dead. The story is fascinating at several levels: the description of the young country as so fractured that any assertion of Federal authority threatened to drive states out of the Union; the tensions between the first President's private and public agendas; the inability of investors and policy makers to know when a new technology (the railroad) had made another (the canal) obsolete. These are all themes that resonate through American history; it is as if Achenbach has discovered their headwaters in this brilliant and highly readable book. Anyone interested in American history, the presidency, the history of the city of Washington, or economic history will love this book. Buy it and read it!
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Summary: Better to watch Discovery Channel
Review: Okay, but it's pop history that only die hard buffs will want. Weird paradox, huh? Try Wiencek's An Imperfect God.
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Summary: Even Casual History Buffs Will Love the Grand Idea
Review: The Grand Idea is a thoughtful examination of the Indispensable Man's abiding interest in devloping trade between the coastal states of the new union and the growing territories across the mountains. Author Joel Achenbach breathes genuine life into Washington's frequently remarked but little explored passion for his vision of the Potomac as the principal route to the west in a very readable book spiced with moments of surprising humor and filled with both intimate glimpses of the great man and the trenchant commentary of an informed 21st century observer. A great read for anyone remotely interested in General Washington, the development of transportation in America at the dawn of the 19th century or the genesis of Washington D.C.
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Summary: An enjoyable read on an over-looked subject
Review: The title "George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West" is s little misleading. The central narrative certainly the opening of commerce routs to the West, and George Washington's obsession with that objective, but the real story in this book is the survival of the United States as a nation and how Washington's unyielding commitment to keep his dream alive. Washington visited more of the country than any man of his day, and repeated trips to the wilderness as the frontier steadily moved westward. He fully knew the diversity of cultures and values in the different regions of his country, and was acutely aware of how little connection there was between those peoples and regions.
Washington saw a commercial connection to the west as critical to cement the states together. Settlers in Ohio had little access to the market places of the coastal states, and less access to the good available there. Washington feared that if the Spanish opened the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans to American settlers, the westerners would become more attached to Spain than to the Coastal states, possibly to the point of hostility. What I found truly fascinating was the degree which many of the Founders opposed any and all measures proposed to strengthen the union. Independence was barely won, and not yet proven sustainable, and the civil war was brewing. The Southerners opposed allowing the federal government even the authority to build roads and bridges; for fear that a powerful federal government would eventually take on the issue of slavery.
I found this book a truly enjoyable read on a long neglected, but important thread in American history.
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