George Washington's America: A Biography Through His Maps » (First Edition)

Historian Barnet Schecter is the author of The Battle for New York, the hinge battle in the American Revolution, and The Devil's Own Work, a chronicle of the Civil War draft riots in New York. He lives in New York City.

From his teens until his death, the maps George Washington drew and purchased were always central to his work. After his death, many of the most important maps he had acquired were bound into an atlas. The atlas remained in his family for almost a century before it was sold and eventually ended up at Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library.

Inspired by these remarkable maps, historian Barnet Schecter has crafted a unique portrait of our first Founding Father, placing the reader at the scenes of his early career as a surveyor, his dramatic exploits in the French and Indian War (his altercation with the French is credited as the war's spark), his struggles throughout the American Revolution as he outmaneuvered the far more powerful British army, his diplomacy as president, and his shaping of the new republic. Beautifully illustrated in color, with twenty-four of the full atlas maps, dozens more detail views from those maps, and numerous additional maps (some drawn by Washington himself), portraits, and other images—and produced in an elegant large format—George Washington's America allows readers to visualize history through Washington's eyes, and sheds fresh light on the man and his times.

The New York Times - Virginia DeJohn Anderson

Schecter…knows how to tell a good story in clear, vigorous prose.