History breeds nobility. The American President George Washington needs no introduction; who was a great political leader with a heart of gold that always thought about the people. He served as the first president of the United States and paved the way for the institution and his work procedure, legal policies and constituencies become the foundation of the American Presidency. However, despite his two-term service as the Chief Magistrate of a great nation, his early life was a mystery which was presented to the audience through the book "Ten Facts About Washington’s Presidency''. The story of his life as a boy has never been precisely documented. There have been numerous books that tried to capture George Washington as a child, but none of which has ever been less elusive than the first one published.
Biographers and historians lamented on how to write Washington’s childhood. Even later in his life, the man evaded his history and so they were left with fabrications and imagined memories. Philip Levy, in his book ‘’George Washington Written upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape’’, delve deeper from what are commonly known facts about George Washington’s life and goes into the trivial, more tangible basis about his boyhood. Levy' book unfolds and binds years of realistically imagined stories and brings us a brilliant book about the man who is immortalized by his name (Sutherland).As the book progresses, Philip Levy’s effort to define George Washington’s early life becomes more coherent. The various historical facts gathered from Washington’s childhood home have proven to be very useful in the narrative.
In Chapter I, which is entitled as “Somewhere This Had Beginnings”, Levy indulges us with the detailed and well-researched facts about early memories of his life. It is a delightful account about one of the most influential man in history that takes readers from across the world into a new realm of understanding. It accomplishes what seemed to be an impossible task for any biographer (Vicary).
Levy wrote, “There are two ways to get to Ferry Farm from the Fredericksburg side of the Rappahannock River. Both have traveller’s crossing modern bridges and tunnelling onto the state road system”(25). The exploration of George Washington’s childhood home through archaeological study revealed the landscape through which he was shaped and transformed to become a man with leadership qualities.
Through binding the different understanding from the first chapter, Chapter II, “Completing the Circuit of Memory” develops a paradigm shift from the common misinterpretations of Washington’s life. Levy described the chapter as, “The focus of this chapter is a three-page handwritten survey that George Washington composed in the fall of 1771” (59). The lessons learned from the archival research brought Levy to the realization of binding existing facts together in order to construct a comprehensive description of George Washington’s upbringing. The constant research and documentation helped the writer to imagine the childhood life and also curve the book with facts to bring into life, a well-researched biography possible. Through these limited pages, Philip Levy effectively unveiled new details about Washington.
Chapter III focuses on the blossoming years of George Washington. Philip Levy narrated, “In 1996, Wal-Mart announced its plans to develop Ferry Farm as a new shopping plaza” (93). This event brought Washington’s family together and has become a vital part of his younger years. Philip Levy took advantage of that fact by doing an in-depth observation of the landscape where Washington developed awareness of himself and the country. The chapter detailed his first-hand experiences in economics and family affairs. Ferry Farm and the young George Washington have a history- a history which Levy intelligently unfolded to the audience through his book.
There is no doubt that George Washington will remain a symbol of American history (Vicary). Philip Levy provides us with a much lighter narrative that our generation would enjoy reading. That is, in itself, a victory for all biographers.
Work Cited
Levy, Philip. George Washington Written Upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015.Project MUSE. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <https://muse.jhu.edu/>.
Sutherland, Matt. "Review Of George Washington Written Upon The Land". Foreword Reviews. N.p., 2015. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
"Ten Facts About Washington’s Presidency". George Washington's Mount Vernon. N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/ten-facts-about-washingtons-presidency/
Vicary, Paul. "George Washington Written Upon The Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, And Landscape By Philip Levy | Portland Book Review". Portlandbookreview.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.<http://portlandbookreview.com/2016/01/george-washington-written-upon-the-land-nature-memory-myth-and-landscape-by-philip-levy/>
