Edited by Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig.  ISBN 0-8139-1857-X.  Copyright 1999.  Softcover with 453 pages.  

This abridgment of the Papers of George Washington shows Washington as an intensely private man; none of his contemporaries would have expected that he would reveal the inner Washington even to his diaries. If he was regarded as aloof and enigmatic by his peers, it was an image the deliberately fostered as contributing to his public role. An examination of his correspondence gives us a different view of Washington, and we find him warmer and more intense than we knew, given to wry humor, compassion, and sometimes towering range. This book stands and welcome contrast to the colorlessness that has become the hallmark of too many documentary editions.