The Indefensible Man

Revisiting Flexner's Washington

Thanks to the buying choices of a friend visiting for a long weekend, I recently had to hand a first edition of James Thomas Flexner’s 1965 book George Washington: The Forge of Experience (1732-1775), the first installment in what would turn out to be his Pulitzer Prize-winning four-volume biography of George Washington, which he later condensed into his bestselling George Washington: The Indispensable Man. I’ve read and hand-sold about a million copies of The Indispensable Man, but I’ve also owned the four-volume set a few different times in my life, which might seem odd, since Flexner is an enormous booster of Washington and I’m, well, not.