George Washington's America: A Biography Through His Maps
*Starred Review* From the dispersal of George Washington’s papers after his death, an intriguing item survived that today reposes in Yale University’s library. It’s a collection of 40 or so maps that Washington collected or personally drew and bound into an atlas. Historian Schecter (The Battle for New York, 2002) capitalizes on it to trace both Washington’s travels through colonial, revolutionary, and early republican America, and military and political events that Washington followed through cartographic study. Arranged by Washington’s biographical arc, starting with his expeditions of the French and Indian War and ending with his will’s disposition of his land and slaves, reproductions of each whole map accompany magnifications of the particular areas where Washington journeyed in person or in mind. Due to map references embedded in the text, the narrative oscillates between image and word, inducing avid readers to flip pages back and forth to follow the action. Augmented by portraits of Washington and his contemporaries and scenes of places and episodes of the times, Schecter’s conception of converting Washington’s atlas into a full-scale illustrated biography results in smashing success. Conveying how Washington visualized North America from the minute to the continental scale, it will fascinate history buffs now and should be durably library-useful. --Gilbert Taylor