My uncle’s really awesome too! Only there is part of me that nevertheless think it’s a bit silly.

Aw, too bad this wasn’t good for you. I enjoy the feeling of self-righteousness that comes with knowing other people (like the anti-gun control lobby!) are wrong, so I enjoyed learning about all the misconceptions about George Washington.

Also, one of my very favourite teachers in high school was a Civil War reenactor! Ever since then, I can’t quite bring myself to smirk at them, because he was such an awesome person.

You are trying to poke me, but it won’t work. I finished my dissertation in the early 80s but all the research was from old newspapers and manuscripts from the Library of Congress and the Folger. That stuff is still not on the interwebs–which was part of the point. Even microfilm disintegrates, but a bound dissertation will live on a shelf forever (unread).

Except I am not sure I want to know a whole biography’s worth of information about George Washington. :p This one’s fun as a standalone, as long as you don’t mind being left without some of the truth, after the lies have been exposed as such.

Contested Will would have left me a little bit unsatisfied without the last chapter. I thought as far as that went, Shapiro showed so plainly the lack of evidence for any other candidate, that I never felt like my belief in Shakespeare as Shakespeare was wavering. I liked the section at the end, but I didn’t need it.

No! I want to read The Silent Woman for sure and maybe Two Lives but maybe not because I do not care much about Gertrude Stein. But The Silent Woman, definitely. Thank you for the recommendation. The book blogosphere never fails me. 😀

I’d say that knowing many things about George Washington isn’t necessary to read this book, only it’s difficult for me to judge. I don’t know much about George Washington, but I do have a general framework of information in my brain, based on scraps of recalled lessons from history classes over years of school. I feel like it wouldn’t make that much of a difference, though, so I say, read it!

I actually am not wild about real biographies. There have been a few I really enjoyed, but I have to be desperately interested in someone to want to read a whole biography of their whole life. A book like this, with a slightly different focus, can be a lot more interesting to me.

Hurrah for laziness in higher education!