A Blooding at Great Meadows: Young George Washington and the Battle That Shaped the Man

Reader Reviews
I found this book to be quite interesting and insightful on how George Washington entered into the military career and the harsh lessons he had to endured in learning his craft. The book traces Washington's interest in the military aspects from his boyhood days when he was heavily influenced by his half brother, Lawrence Washington and his slight military career. The author made it clear that George Washington not only wanted a military career but push hard to get one. The core of the book lies from the time when Washington was sent as a emissary from Royal Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia to the French in the Ohio territory and ends with Braddock's defeat. During those two events, was the proving grounds for George Washington as he learned from his mistakes and from the mistakes of others while learning valuable lessons on the art of war in his native land where regular European way of war and frontier style of warfare both interlaced with each other. The book centered a lot around his Fort Necessity campaign that reflects heavily on his inexperience as a military commander. The book didn't go too deeply into the surrender terms where Washington ended up confessing that he "assassinated" the French emissary during his first battle. That probably deserves a book on its own since it does smear dishonor on Washington's good name just by his consent even with ignorance. (Of course, the question is, even if he did knew, would he had sign it because if he did not, that battle could have been a massacre of his troops against overwhelming French and Indian forces.) I think the book did a good job overall reflecting on the early experiences Washington had as a young man and how that experience helped shape him as a commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The book proves to be well written and nicely researched. If there was one element of the book that I thought was lacking, was that there was no maps, no illustrations, not even a photograph of what Fort Necessity looks like from the modern reconstruction at the National Battlefield site mentioned in the book. Now I been to that site and I know the locations of the places mentioned in the book. But I also know that many others do not. (At least my hardback book didn't have these stuff.) Still, the book deserves a four star rating since I thought it was insightful and accomplished basically what the author wanted to convey to his reader.