Martha Washington: An American Life

Product Details

With this revelatory and painstakingly researched book, Martha Washington, the invisible woman of American history, at last gets the biography she deserves. In place of the domestic frump of popular imagination, Patricia Brady resurrects the wealthy, attractive, and vivacious young widow who captivated the youthful George Washington. Here are the able landowner, the indomitable patriot (who faithfully joined her husband each winter at Valley Forge), and the shrewd diplomat and emotional mainstay. And even as it brings Martha Washington into sharper and more accurate focus, this sterling life sheds light on her marriage, her society, and the precedents she established for future First Ladies.

• ISBN13: 9780143037132
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Customer Reviews ::

The accounting for her resistence to her husband's attitude about freeing the slaves - Not again - Dallas, TX usa
The book is written in context of some of our shallowest values in American culture regarding how women appear and not nearly enough about how they influence the development of the national concscience. Mrs. Adams was more admirable, whereas Mrs. Washington was just the first. She cared for her husband well but seemed not to share much of the sensibilities of the issues of the time. Her resistence to his desire to free the slaves after his death, as he had grown to believe was appropriate, was a case in point of the smallness of her viewpoint. The fact that she felt her life threathen after his death was the impetus for changing her mind, which brings into question how she had related to them(the slaves) over the years. She was the first woman of stature in the country to demonstrate how other women of different races were exploited and oppressed to preserve her way of life.

I prefer homages to Eleanor Rosevelt as examples to teach young girls values of consequence. I am surprised that we would want to elevate one more "southern belle" who just wanted to dressup and look pretty while the servants were living in hell. We already have Scarlet O'hara.

The author's recreation of her youthful image feels so anti-feminist since it seems to attach too much value to how she looked rather than how she acted. Such superficiality.