The owners, Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine as well as our staff, we would like to welcome you to todays event. To briefly note some housekeeping items before we get going, we would greatly appreciate it if you turn off or silenced their cell phones. This is my favorite part. Everyone starts region. So as not to disturb the conversation. We do have ats microphone, this one, for the q a portion of the event. It will get passed around if you raise your hand. Weou are recording this event so we do want to use the microphone or any questions that we have. Copies of the book are available at the register if you like to purchase one copy or many copies. We encourage many. There would be a sign after the q a so if youd like to get your purchased book signed, lightp in an orderly fashion against this sort of cabinet at the conclusion of the talk. It is now my pleasure to introduce alexis coe, author of you never forget your first a biography of George Washington. She follows her awardwinning, a murder in memphis come soon to be a major Motion Picture . Kind of soonish . With a fresh look at George Washington that from the separates the man men from the legend. The host of audibles, cohost of president s are people too and a consulting producer on doors Kearns Goodwin forthcoming History Channel series on George Washington come she is the founder through a feminist lens. Ofli a free nation reliant on safe labor. Alexis will be in conversation with a columnist for the new york times. Please join me in warmly welcoming them to politics and prose. [applause] hello, alexis . Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello audience. Lets just get started. Ed lets do it. All right. So, what was the genesis of this book . Your first book, as mentioned, a murderer of a couple. This seems like a very different direction than crime. Am asked. A really good answer, i dont have one. I will just go on. They seem really different. As a historian, when you are in grad school, you study this theory, this narrow time. I studied this literally a year. After that my first job was at the new york public library. Bryant park. I worked in excavations. My job was collective memory. You have virginia woolf, it is all over the place. And, during that time, i began to think a lot which i had found an example in a book when i was in grad school. I did not want to be someone known as a woman, i thought i wanted 10 year, you cannot touch love as a woman, as a historian, or you just will not get a job. I thought about it for years. I felt like it was a really interesting story and it explains so much about the origin of prejudice against love. I felt if i knew the story and i did not talk about it and i did not make these connections i would be complicit in it. That is how i felt about washington, too. Love president ial biographies. Requiring that i would understand what was going on. I would read micro histories. I would also read like three or four biographies at the same time in conversation with each other. I would emerge with some sort of understanding, of the president , hopefully. That just never happened to me with washington. I felt like, you know, a surprising assertion to make. You look at washington books. Quite a few. One book on frida. I felt like i had to do something to that bookshelf. It needed something. You talk about how all these washington biographies, not just that there is a lot of them, but they have a similar cash. At the beginning you said typical washington biographer grew up going to historical sites, lived in virginia. It sounds like me. [laughter] what you weret kind of responding to in the world of washington biographies. Ind found that, i joked that when these men got their book contracts, before they signed it, they had to take a solemn oath and say i have all the same goals and then i will do it the same way. I did not take the oath. The thingng about it, i thought that it was sort of funny. To marvel to be real. They do talk about things that i joke about. Really into it seems inappropriate. It is funny, and they are nice. [laughter] i have seen nicer. Hamiltons are also nice. I mean, here is the thing, while thiss is often called a feminist biography, if they had written about marthas thighs, we would all be up in arms. It is a double standard. It works both ways. I thought it was very strange. There is zero interest in women. I did not understand, we talk about forward, obama, clinton, president s raised by single mothers who struggled. Why arent we talking about washington . He is the ultimate american story. That is amazing. Why dont we talk about that . Nothing made sense to me. As soon as i checked the primary sources, we all know the little number in a sentence. You check the end note. Quoting a secondary source. That quotes another secondary source. You know something is going on. That kind of takes us to the book proper. One dealing with washingtons earlyy life to his early middleage. I found that first part to be so fascinating. In part because you begin it with a series of washington. Even as someone who knows a bit about the guy, i still find it immensely useful to be given an info dumpp like that. I would love to hear you talk about the reasons for approaching that information like that. Most would simply try to weave it into the narrative. Here, you dont. It kind of jumps up at you. A veryy useful way of getting into the book. So much of this early part of washingtons life, as you discuss it, consumed with the people around him. His context as this kind of young virginia stryver. A guy that wants to, has his oceyes at the top. Because he cannot feed his horse. A lot of struggle going on. If you walked at all, you were poor and you were looked down upon. That was essential to him. I think the thing is, you know, if you also look at the front, line up all the biographies, they kind of have the same portrait. I call them visual coffins. I dont think they do anything for you. May be like destiny. Ysalso have a big problem with. No one is destined to do anything. It takes away a lot of agency and hard work. I want president ial history because the presidency and the person that establish they office, the w person it was buit around, hill everyone pressured into it, important that everyone understand him and the presidency. The biographies are alienating in the way their visual presentations, their titles, the way they are written. And, so, i really wanted the reader to feel if they had never read a president ial biography that theyve had everything they needed at the beginning of the book in the beginning of the section to equip them to feel as though they were the expert. That was part of it. I thoughtt a lot about my lead. The other part was washington has been called by an adams family series editor. President ial editors. They edit the papers. Call tim panella once to myed face. [laughter] first of all, you cannot compare too much fun. That is why their letters survive. They knew that. The thing is, you can break him out of this mold. He can be fun. He can be interesting. You have to have fun with this. Called irreverence. Which i think as a whole different thing. The way i organized the material in my head the way i was trying to make sure i got things across be vulnerable and just share it with everyone. I do think that there are certain things that help you understand, i can tell you in a sentence, for example, the beginning of the revolution. He lost more battles than he won. Why are we talking about the battles . Ng he has not fighting on the front lines. He i is not out there. Why are we wasting time talking about it . Why dont i just tell you about the battles. That is less important to me. I really can get lost in a paragraph. The war went on for a long time. It was not quick. We had one general and the british had many generals. By presenting you with a chart at the beginning of that section and just listening to George Washington and all these other guys, you get it and you take that knowledge with you. I do not want my reader, longest answer ever, i dont want my reader, i do not expect you to turn around and give a really long talk about this. I want you to be really excited about it. I want you to talk about it at a cocktail party. I read half the book on the train ride home. You know washington loved dogs . One of the things at the beginning. She was like, i did not know that. We talked about the dogs. Do your point, i really wanted to talk about these facts. And it is as important to know as he loved dogs. You have to know he was silly enough to call his dog sweet lips. Do you need that, right. That is ridiculous. You also need details around other things like you cannot just know how many people he owned and he felt a certain way. You need to know he assaultedhi his slaves. You cannot just hear that. You need an example of it. It is really just me giving you every detail i can squeeze out of it. You said something earlier that got my brain churning. Because this book does so much to ima stuff i washington, placed in this context, placed in the context of his relationships, because he is a model of the presidency, there is this way in which the book, unlike the more traditional biographies that feel like they are really biographies about roman emperors, this is a biography about a president. Had a certain point just a dude. Just a dude that we chose. It is interesting that throughout the book, you always are sure to emphasize to us not just the people around them, but washington as an uncertain person. Washington someone that has goals and aims, but the thing that i had in my mind was lethal weapon. Im just too old for this. Doesnt want to do it anymore. We think a mono list. An agreement at all times. They understood what they were doing. They set out with all the details figured out. That is just not true. Washington was annotating. He was doing the best he could. I found that feeling. Getting into his head about how he understood himself doing the job. Again, this humanizes him in the office. It should give us comfort in the messiness in some ways. A big part of the book deals with washington as a slave owner. Ou cannot not deal with that. One of the overriding identities of his entire life. Business. Right. Always concerned about what he is going to do about the farm. How he is going to feed and house the people he owns. What they are going to do for him. I think that you talked about towards the end how washington sort of what always say that i am going to free my slaves at some point, but never really act it on it. Could you just talk about his ambivalence there. His unwillingness to take the next step. He appears in virginia who did take that extra step. I also feel like this is something that biographers were almost trying to pull over on us they make it sound as if washington i think that this is helpful to them because it is hard to revere someone, which i think they do, which is a bias. It is hard to do that if you cannot see him as having this beautiful realization. Washington begins to have, not a change of heart, but a change of priorities during the revolution he meets different people. The argument is sometimes that, you know, enslaved and free black men fought during the revolution and that is what changed his mind. No. He did not want that. He was really reluctant about it. Just like billy lee righthand man always presented in the narrative as he is always been there. Representative of everyoneen rather than the exception. What i wanted to do was have that present. It is present in his mind. As important to him as anything else. He has very concerned about it. What is he concerned about at mount vernon . His labor force. To me, to be honest, and to understand him and his anxieties and priorities, it would have to be there the whole time. As close as i could get it in the material as they are. I wanted to smash a bunch into one biography because i think it can be that way. The thing is, you know, washington, it is not a wish he would have done this. It is understanding why he ultimately did the thing that he did. He could have fooled his land. He was cash poor. We called them planters which i think is misleading. They are plantation owners. They were all cash poor. But they had land. No one had more land than georgo washington. He had gained choice land between the indian war where he fought for the british. I think he happily would have continued to deal. Had they just given him the promotion that he wanted. He was a reluctant rebel. We are not talking about thomas paine here. I think that it is important to think about the things that he is saying are not quite true. I dont have the money, i cannot do this. He could have if he really wanted to. If he wanted to be the person that lafayette thought he could have. He had examples. People like to say he had no examples. There were people in virginia that did this that had to leave under duress because of other slave masters being quite terrified of this. Lets look at him clearly. Lets talk about how it was kind of a dick move for martha. He passed the buck to her and left her in this incredibly vulnerable position. Ended up, you know, hurting the inevitable, but also the same problem existed that he just dim not want to see and be responsible for which was the separating of families forever. How many people were enslaved at mount vernon kind of throughout . It fluctuated. Martha was married before. She had two children in herdr previous marriage. Her estate had over 130 enslaved people. Washington inherited 10 when he was 11. That number swelled because he purchased them. The other word thing, his biographers would say and enslavement was sold to him. Not like he was like, oh, fine. He went to richmond with the explicit purpose of buying people. That number swelled to 214 by the time he died. The thing for me reading about washington as a slaveholder, reminding you that most of the people that he saw for most of his life were enslaved people. I live in charlottesville. When i went up there and they talked about it in those terms there, most people jefferson saw most of the time where the people he enslaved. That radically changes how you think about these men. And how they must have thought about themselves. It was not a salon every day with, you know, all the bodies. Ben franklin. [laughter] it was from sunup to sundown most days seeing the people you enslaved. Ou thinking about that fact at some point during the day when you had to discipline. I dont know if ive a question here, but just an observation. I think that theres something really worthwhile inre thinking about it and talking about that. Washington, you know, it was so impressive the way he talked about all these new schemes and inventions. To maximize profit and labor to make sure, you know, he was applying that. I think its really important. We do think of them as doing important work all the time. They were messy, they were drama queens and they were also cruel and thought themselves to be better. On a sunday, washington would hang out with his wife and make enslaved people rowboats and race across the potomac. That is what he did on a sunday. I want to know that he went to church sometimes, but i also want to know that he did that. A big part of the book, something id never really thought about as far as washington goes, this patriarch. Not just with enslaved people, but a large number of young men and women. Some related to him through various connections others not so much so. Part of the washington household. The keeper of many wards. You say that this is something, traditional biographers do not really deal with at all in terms of washingtons life. Seem to be a very big part of his life and something he was very invested in. They are really married to the narrative. He had no biological children. Our conception of children has really changed over time. It was not uncommon to marry a woman who had children. That was a really good sign that she could have more. Certainly not the only founder. A lot of large adult sons, basically. It was so strange to me that they spent so much time, again, it does not further our understanding of him to talk about why he could not have children. Why dont welo look at the fact that he was lousy with children. They were everywhere and always giving him problems. Back to the archives. He wrote so many letters every single day lecturing, finding a better tutor giving a lot of unsolicited love advice. That was a part of his worldview that is what he saw every day. You do not read those letters and think he is not really invested in this kid. He is so angry. Again, it is not like oh theyre just like us, but when he lectures his grandson, we do not she does not say step grandson. We say step grandson. Its like losing his umbrella. Something that really struck me throughout was not just most of them in on the reshington side of the family died pretty young. Also becoming hyperaware of his death and begins almost acting with his legacy in mind. How are people going to remember me once i am dead. What should i do now to ensure that those memories are positive i think that is absolutely true. He was really sensitive. He was sort of untouchable the first four years. He created this cabinet with people that disagreed. Hamilton and jefferson leading the pack. He thought, okay, this will be like a council ward. I will ask them offer their opinions because he did value other peoples opinions. Then i will decide what i want to decide. He thought he was still a general and that would be fine. He realized his worst fears. He became really aware of how people thought about him when they were not saying nice things all the time. He was not the most famous person in the world. That was really rough for him. He really thought about how can i just be with the control freak. How can i get control of this situation. Not to say that emancipating the people he enslaved was entirely legacy building, but it certainly was a big part of it. We dont want to deny it had a real impact on these peoples lives good and bad. They never saw family members ever again. But, he was really aware of that. What he chose to preserve and what he did not is very telling, too. He understood that we would probably judge him about slavery so he would have to take care of that. He begins to edit his papers all the way back to the french and indian war. There are parts he does not touch. Those parts are about native americans. He is awful. Should be again, when we talk about this we should just say genocide. We should just say it. That is it. He was sort of proud of it. He was proud to be called the town destroyer. That means raising a town. You know. He was proud of telling indians that, you know, there way of life was over. A white mans way of life was better. Why dont they just follow his example. I am going to retire to my farm. You should figure out your farm. It is the only way of life. S he thought that that was great. A very positive thing. Before we go to questions, there is one thing i think that is strangely relevant today. In washington, this is well known, when he left office he warned about all these things. As you sort of made mention of earlier, he sort of unavoidably became a bipartisan figure. One of the more interesting antidotes that you tell is