By John Ferling.  ISBN-13:978-1-59691-465-0.  Copyright 2009.  Hardcover with 438 pages including bibliography, notes, and index.  Additional pages include 16 glossy color pages of portraits and paintings and 7 black and white maps. 

Historian John Ferling draws on his unsurpassed knowledge of the Founding Fathers to provide a fresh and provocative new portrait of the greatest of them all, George Washington.
Even compared to his fellow founders, George Washington stands tall.  Our first president has long been considered a stoic hero, holding himself above the rough-and-tumble politics of his day.  Ferling peers behind that image, carefully burnished by Washington himself, to show us a leader who was not only above politics, but also a canny infighter, a master of persuasion, manipulation, and deniability.
During the Revolution, Washington used his skills to steer the Continental Army through crises that would have broken less determined men; he squeezed out rival generals and defused dissent from those below him.  Ending the war as a national hero, Washington “allowed” himself to be pressed into the presidency, guiding the nation with the same brilliantly maintained pose of selfless public interest.