It's Monday, What are You Reading? An Artist in Treason

It's Monday, What are You Reading? An Artist in Treason

This is the eleventh entry for this meme, suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books.


My latest read is An Artist in Treason by Andro Linklater with a subtitle that may set a modern day record: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army and Agent 13 in the Spanish Secret Service.

The subtitle really tells it all. Though he betreayed (some of) America's strategic secrets, sought to keep the new country from expanding beyond the Mississippi, and almost delivered Lewis and Clark's expedition into Spanish hands, four presidents {some might say the most important four, since they were the first four} - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison - all turned a blind eye to his treachery. In the end, in the crucial test in 1806, Wilkinson did, at the last minute, turn the army against Aaron Burr and foiled his conspiracy to break up the Union.

Linklater adds documentation from Spanish archives unseen by prior historians further illuminate this distinctive character in American history.

Happy Reading!  ;-)

Bill  ;-)