It's Monday, What are you Reading? George Washington, Entrepreneur

 

It's Monday, What are you Reading? 

George Washington, Entrepreneur: 

How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World

By John Berlau

https://www.amazon.com/George-Washington-Entrepreneur-Founding-Business/dp/1250172608/

The first of three more Christmas books. I’m always interested in new approaches to these bios of the Presidents and Founding Fathers. I’m now especially interested to see how this one compares to others I have read. Usually learn new tidbits, from the different slants the authors use. 

Amazon’s Description:

A business biography of George Washington, focusing on his many innovations and inventions.

George Washington: general, statesman...businessman? Most people don't know that Washington was one of the country's first true entrepreneurs, responsible for innovations in several industries. In George Washington, Entrepreneur, John Berlau presents a fresh, surprising take on our forefather's business pursuits.

History has depicted Washington as a gifted general and political pragmatist, not an intellectual heavyweight. But he was a patron of inventors and inveterate tinkerer, and just as intelligent as Jefferson or Franklin. His library was filled with books on agriculture, history, and philosophy. He was the first to breed horses with donkeys to produce the American mule. On his estate, he grew countless varieties of trees and built a greenhouse full of exotic fruits, herbs, and plants. Unlike his Virginia neighbors who remained wedded to tobacco, Washington planted seven types of wheat. His state-of-the-art mill produced flour which he exported to Europe in sacks stamped "G. Washington"―one of the very first branded food products. Mount Vernon was also home to a distillery and became one of the largest American whiskey producers of the era.

Berlau's portrait of Washington, drawn in large part from his journals and extensive correspondence, presents a side of him we haven't seen before. It is sure to delight readers of presidential biography and business history.

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Franklin & Washington

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Franklin & Washington

The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson

https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Washington-Partnership-Edward-Larson-ebook/dp/B07RNL7LY5/

Got a Kindle recommendation I could no refuse. Not sure why I had missed this one earlier, but it definitely fits my reading preferences. Thanks, Amazon, you did it again… even tho’ it only cost me $1.02 with credits… Good start to it…

Amazon Description:

"Larson's elegantly written dual biography reveals that the partnership of Franklin and Washington was indispensable to the success of the Revolution." —Gordon S. Wood 

 
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a masterful, first-of-its-kind dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, illuminating their partnership's enduring importance. 

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • One of Washington Post's "10 Books to Read in February" • One of USA Today’s “Must-Read Books" of Winter 2020  •  One of Publishers Weekly's "Top Ten" Spring 2020 Memoirs/Biographies

Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Vastly different men, Benjamin Franklin—an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north—and George Washington—a slavehold­ing general from the agrarian south—were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention, held in Franklin’s Philadelphia and presided over by Washington. And yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since.
Illuminating Franklin and Washington’s relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project.
During the French and Indian War, Franklin supplied the wagons for General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated assault on Fort Duquesne, and Washington buried the general’s body under the dirt road traveled by those retreating wagons. After long sup­porting British rule, both became key early proponents of inde­pendence. Rekindled during the Second Continental Congress in 1775, their friendship gained historical significance during the American Revolution, when Franklin led America’s diplomatic mission in Europe (securing money and an alliance with France) and Washington commanded the Continental Army. Victory required both of these efforts to succeed, and success, in turn, required their mutual coordination and cooperation. In the 1780s, the two sought to strengthen the union, leading to the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the founding document that bears their stamp.
Franklin and Washington—the two most revered figures in the early republic—staked their lives and fortunes on the American experiment in liberty and were committed to its preservation. Today the United States is the world’s great super­power, and yet we also wrestle with the government Franklin and Washington created more than two centuries ago—the power of the executive branch, the principle of checks and balances, the electoral college—as well as the wounds of their compromise over slavery. Now, as the founding institutions appear under new stress, it is time to understand their origins through the fresh lens of Larson’s Franklin & Washington, a major addition to the literature of the founding era.

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Ten Lessons

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? 

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World 

by

Fareed Zakaria

https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Post-Pandemic-World-Fareed-Zakaria-ebook/dp/B08BWRX6H5/

I saw Rachel Maddow on MSNBC interview Fareed Zakaria of CNN about this new book, and knew I had to have it, for reference, at least… got the Kindle edition. Their discussion on “Good Government” in Lesson Two seemed especially relevant. Can’t wait to check it out. It is on my Kindle right now. Should go read some more!

Amazon Description:

COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come?

Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.