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The first entire volume says little about Washington, because Marshall felt he needed to set the stage with a condensed history of the colonies prior to Washington. Few of Washington's later biographers went to such subsequent introductory lengths, but then Marshall's law practice ended up acquainting him with the early pre-history of the deeds and conveyances of Virginia, the further elaboration of which can be interpreted as enveloping the rest of the colonies.

This is also a history of the U.S. Army, and how it fought and starved in successive cycles which are described in minute detail exceeding most other accounts. Some of this covers organized military campaigns preceding the declaration of independence.

Leading and embodying this story of land and armies, and ideas, Marshall gives us Washington, illuminated most clearly by excerpts from Washington's own letters. Marshall also gives us Marshall, distilling out of military examples and instances of weak government preceding 1789, potent arguments for increased federal power to do the things our federal government has since done quite well: raise armies, raise taxes, subdue the Indians, kick out the European powers, build a strong navy, and take no back talk from smallish tyrants resentful of centralized governmental power directly and simultaneously exercised on each citizen, and on each state.

When Hamilton wrote that we need "energy in the Executive" he had to have been thinking of Washington, and Marshall catalogs this energy with meticulous documentation of each British officer leading campaigns against us, each subordinate officer on our side under Washington's command, and how the constant maneuver of armies up and down the length of our seaboard was accomplished--usually without many shoes and without much dry powder.

There's a lot here in all five volumes! When one man had such a central role in all of the key events of our country's founding, and rode out the formation into its institutional phase, thereafter to die in bed at home, Marshall may not have been able to write it any other way than to go over all of the events, to catch the essence of the man. Marshall's writing is free of modern fixations on negative or unseemly personal or useless tidbits of trivia. Modern readers are left to cling to factual reporting of how Washington handled this British Lord or that reluctant congress.

Neat discovery: LaFayette was only 24 years old while commanding the French at the battle of Yorktown. Marshall quotes from the letters of Cornwallis (or maybe it was Sir Henry Clinton) who refers to LaFayette as "the boy." This is the same boy who later presented Washington with the key to the Bastille, which today hangs on the wall of the stairway of Mount Vernon going up to the second floor.

Got a Kindle, iPod Touch, iPhone or Droid? Download an 'App' that will allow you to read PDF files on your device (even if they are large in size). There are many apps that will do this, and many are FREE!

Don't pass up this chance to get this exhaustive 5 Volume biography on George Washington.

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