From the Publisher
The gifted historian Craig Shirley has written a surprising and important account of an essential figure long shrouded in the mists of time and legend: Mary Ball Washington, the woman who gave us the Father of our country.” — Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and number-one New York Times bestselling author of Destiny and Power, American Lion, and Thomas Jefferson
“George Washington: gentleman farmer, revered military general, first American president, Father of our country . . . and son with mother issues? Craig Shirley brings to life America’s first First Family in vivid detail, in this dazzling biography of George’s colorful—and often difficult—mother. This riveting page-turner puts you at the center of one of the greatest Colonial family dramas—and you will see Washington and the forces that made him in a whole new light.” — Monica Crowley, New York Times bestselling author and columnist for the Washington Times
“To read this magnificent biography of America’s First Mother is to understand the founding of our great nation from a fresh vantage point. Craig Shirley is at once a first-rate historian and a spellbinding writer. Mary Ball Washington is a major contribution to Colonial and early republic scholarship. Highly recommended!” — Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history at Rice University, and CNN’s Presidential Historian
“Craig Shirley brings the same appetite for fresh facts and original insights he applied to Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt to Mary Ball Washington, the mother—and prime shaper—of George Washington.” — Michael Barone, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
“Craig Shirley has delivered a long-overdue, captivating book about the exceptional mother of the Father of our country.” — Gay Hart Gaines, former Regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association
“Written with verve, fairness and sympathetic imagination…it fills a long-standing void in our understanding of how George Washington evolved from an ambitious, largely self-educated young provincial who had trouble controlling his temper, into an inspiring, stoically self-disciplined leader of men.” — Washington Times
Monica Crowley
George Washington: gentleman farmer, revered military general, first American president, Father of our country . . . and son with mother issues? Craig Shirley brings to life America’s first First Family in vivid detail, in this dazzling biography of George’s colorful—and often difficult—mother. This riveting page-turner puts you at the center of one of the greatest Colonial family dramas—and you will see Washington and the forces that made him in a whole new light.
Washington Times
Written with verve, fairness and sympathetic imagination…it fills a long-standing void in our understanding of how George Washington evolved from an ambitious, largely self-educated young provincial who had trouble controlling his temper, into an inspiring, stoically self-disciplined leader of men.
Michael Barone
Craig Shirley brings the same appetite for fresh facts and original insights he applied to Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt to Mary Ball Washington, the mother—and prime shaper—of George Washington.
Douglas Brinkley
To read this magnificent biography of America’s First Mother is to understand the founding of our great nation from a fresh vantage point. Craig Shirley is at once a first-rate historian and a spellbinding writer. Mary Ball Washington is a major contribution to Colonial and early republic scholarship. Highly recommended!
Jon Meacham
The gifted historian Craig Shirley has written a surprising and important account of an essential figure long shrouded in the mists of time and legend: Mary Ball Washington, the woman who gave us the Father of our country.
Gay Hart Gaines
Craig Shirley has delivered a long-overdue, captivating book about the exceptional mother of the Father of our country.
Library Journal
10/01/2019
Shirley (Reagan Rising) acknowledges that this biography is as much a work of historiography as it is history. The life of Mary Ball Washington (1707–89) is relatively unknown, an amalgam of myth, legend, and oral tradition. Spending most of her days in Fredericksburg, VA, Washington was a devout widow who raised six children while tending to the family farm. George, her eldest son, always addressed her as "Honored Madam," terminology that is at the heart of any attempt to unravel their complex relationship. What is most fascinating about her life and legacy is the way in which she has been perceived throughout history, alternately presented as a heroic mother of a prominent leader or a demanding mother who aimed to rein in her rebellious son. There is a lot of material here for a dual-biography of the pair, although that is not Shirley's intent. He does a masterly job of sorting through these contradictions, using a rich array of primary sources to tell Mary's story against the backdrop of Colonial America, slavery, and the marriage, child-rearing, and religious customs of the time. VERDICT For general readers of American history, especially those interested in the revolutionary period.—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ
Kirkus Reviews
2019-08-28
Media commentator Shirley (Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative, 2017, etc.) confronts the problem faced by all of Mary Ball Washington's biographers: lack of material.
"Much of her life was a mystery," writes the author, leaving him to speculate about her personality, appearance, beliefs, and especially her relationship with her eldest son, George. "Was she part helicopter mother, part ‘Mommie Dearest,' " he asks, using popular, if anachronistic, allusions, "or was she a saint and a joy for George? Historians down through the years have portrayed her as both." Shirley looks to several earlier historians for their conclusions, making his biography "just as much a historiography of Mary Washington as it is a history." Those historians, though, also worked with scant evidence, and their portraits were shaped by their own assumptions about how Colonial women must have, or should have, behaved as wives, mothers, and citizens. Hagiographical portraits depicted Mary as "the grandmother and redeemer of America" while one of Washington's early biographers portrayed Mary as an ardent Loyalist, fiercely opposed to the Revolution. Shirley finds a sympathetic reading in Nancy Byrd Turner's The Mother of Washington (1930), to which he frequently refers. He dismisses Marion Harland's Story of Mary Washington, published in 1893, as being so hagiographical that it "glossed over" the death of Mary's infant daughter "as if it was a distraction to the grand character of Mary and her relationship to her children." Shirley thinks that Mary "must have been beside herself" because of the "inseparable and deeply unique connection between mother and daughter." However, neither historian knows for sure. Throughout, Shirley guesses what Mary probably, might have, or perhaps felt. Although he draws on archival material from the papers of George Washington, the resources of the Mary Ball Washington House, and many biographies of Washington, at best, he offers more about Mary's times—likely familiar to readers of Colonial history—than details of her life.
A well-meaning but frustrated attempt to pierce the veil of history.
