Includes index

A powerful apprenticeship (1732-1753) --
A clumsy entrance on the world stage (1753-1754) --
Love and massacre (1754-1755) --
Desperation and disillusionment (1755-1759) --
George Washington's first war (1753-1759) --
A Virginia businessman (1759-1775) --
Washington in his landscapes (1759-1775) --
A new call to arms (1765-1775) --
A Virginian in Yankee-land (1775) --
An early triumph (1775-1776) --
The Continental Army on trial (1776) --
Depths (1776-1777) Heights (1777) --
The loss of Philadelphia (1777) --
The Conway cabal (1777-1778) --
The road turns upward (1778) --
Hope abroad and bankruptcy at home (1778-1779) --
Enter a French army (1779-1780) --
Treason (1775-1780) --
Virginia endangered (1780-1781) --
Yorktown (1781) --
A gulf of civil horror (1781-1783) --
Goodbye to war (1775-1783) --
Pleasures at home (1783-1787) --
Canals and conventions (1783-1787) --
The Constitution of the United States (1787-1788) --
Hysteria and responsibility (1788) --
A second Constitutional Convention (1789) --
The social man (1789) --
Infighting foreshadowed (1790) --
The great schism opens (1790-1792) --
Europeans and Indians (1783-1791) --
Desire to escape (1791-1792) --
No exit (1790-1793) --
Bad omens (1792-1793) --
Earthquake faults (1793 and thereafter) --
A French bombshell (1793) --
Trouble all around (1793) --
A tragic departure (1793) --
Opposite hands across the ocean (1794) --
The Whiskey Rebellion (1790-1794) --
The Democratic Societies (1794) --
A disastrous document (1795) --
Tragedy with a friend (1795) --
Downhill (1795-1796) --
Washington's farewell address (1796) --
The end of the presidency (1796-1797) --
Home again (1797-1799) --
Mental confusion (1797-1798) --
Politics at sunset (1798-1799) --
Washington and slavery (1732-1799) --
Death of a hero (1799).

Washington emerges from these pages as one of history's greatest men, who nonetheless made great mistakes; whose passions sometimes got the better of his self - control; whose achievements in war and in peace were hard won and not always successfully sustained. Washington was for twenty four years ( from his election as commander in chief to his death ) the most conspicuous and influential man in the United States.

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