A review by starwarrior91
Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father by Peter Stark

4.0

I found this title to be very engaging both as a biography of Washington’s early adulthood and as a narrative history of the French and Indian War. Seeing Washington as more of a selfish or petulant young man and how circumstances in the colonial frontier helped change him was definitely fascinating. I agree with many other reviews that the author indeed does a large amount of speculating, but he is usually very clear when he is doing so. For the most part I didn’t mind except for Stark’s fixation on Washington secretly loving Sally Fairfax. While I tend to agree that he did based on the surviving evidence, there really wasn’t anything to suggest Washington’s feelings were reciprocated. Stark just couldn’t seem to let it go however and not only does he assume Sally had feelings for him in return, it forms a subplot to the entire book. As long as you remind yourself to take the author’s speculations as just that, you have a solid Washington biography.