The Making of the President 1789: The Unauthorized Campaign Biography

A biography of George Washington like none other, this revealing portrait brings the sanctified first president down to human scale. Iconoclast Kitman ( George Washington's Expense Account ) portrays him as an incompetent war general, a wheeler-dealer, a land-grabber, ``an intimate of every major financial crook and market manipulator.'' We are told that Prefident Washington (to use the colonial typography) autocratically opposed a multi-party system, and that his elevation from Virginia planter to leader was engineered by a Mount Vernon political machine. Kitman piles on whimsy and clever anachronisms in an effort to lighten the strong populist thrust of his portrayal. There is also much about Washington's false modesty, his drinking habits, his womanizing and his extravagant personal spending even when in debt. (Nov.)