GEORGE WASHINGTON — Audiobook · Narrated by David Patel.

🎧 Listen time: 5 hours 26 minutes


The complete narrative biography of George Washington — soldier, rebel, president — from the Ohio Valley's first shot of a world war through the Constitutional Convention, the two-term precedent, and the Mount Vernon slaveholder who freed his people in his will.

In 1783, a Continental Army officer named Lewis Nicola wrote Washington a letter proposing he accept the title of king. Washington's reply called the idea "abhorrent" and demanded Nicola banish such thoughts. Nicola wrote three subsequent apologies. The man who could have been king refused — and that refusal became the foundation of American republican government.


This George Washington biography traces Washington's full arc: from his 1732 Virginia birth through his command of the Continental Army, the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the first presidency with Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the birth of American political parties, the Farewell Address, and his death on December 14, 1799 — killed in part by bloodletting that removed approximately 40 percent of his blood in a single day. Historian James R. Whitfield draws on Washington's correspondence, plantation records, and the documentary history of the founding era.


Inside this George Washington biography:

The first shot of a world war — Washington's surprise attack on Jumonville in a Pennsylvania ravine on May 28, 1754, the fifteen-minute engagement that triggered the Seven Years' War, and his surrender at Fort Necessity six weeks later (Chapter 3)
Braddock's disaster — 977 British soldiers killed or wounded in two hours; two horses shot under Washington; four bullet holes through his coat; the wilderness education that shaped his Continental Army command (Chapter 4)
Philadelphia, 1787 — Washington's indispensable presence at the Constitutional Convention, without which the enterprise lacked credibility (Chapter 13)
Hamilton's vision vs. Jefferson's dream — the first presidential cabinet, the birth of American political parties, and Washington's failing effort to remain above the fray (Chapter 15)
The Farewell Address — the 1796 warning against permanent alliances and factional politics, drafted with Hamilton and read aloud in the Senate every year since 1893 (Chapter 17)
Washington and slavery — approximately 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon, the 1786 letter expressing the wish for gradual abolition, and the will provision freeing his enslaved people after Martha's death — the most substantial individual emancipation by any principal founder (Chapter 18)


Washington's legacy rests on his refusals: refusing a crown, refusing a third term, refusing to let the Continental Army dissolve into a coup. This founding fathers biography gives listeners the full man — soldier, planter, slaveholder, precedent-setter — with the moral clarity the greatest figure in American political history demands.


For listeners of the audiobook of Ron Chernow's WASHINGTON: A LIFE and David McCullough's JOHN ADAMS.