the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt five)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

Six weeks later, the famous writer Ismail Kadare shocked the country by announcing that he and his family would not return from a trip in France. The request for asylum by the country’s cultural icon sparked fierce debate. Some Albanians felt betrayed that Kadare had abandoned ship. Others felt proud that he had stood against the regime. Many wondered if Kadare, long promoted by Hoxha, would still be studied in schools.

The defection hurt Alia, especially because Tirana was preparing to host a conference of Balkan foreign ministers in October, the first high-level international meeting ever in the country. “With this ugly act, which heavily offends the patriotic conscience of our people and citizens, [Kadare] abandons the people in the fatherland and puts himself in the service of the enemies of Albania,” declared Zëri i Popullit. Kadare defended his decision as a response to broken promises. “Because there is no possibility of legal opposition in Albania, I have chosen this course, which I never wished to take and which I will not recommend to others,” he wrote. Ten years later, back in his Tirana apartment, Kadare told me that his defection was intended to “stimulate the democratization of Albania.” He wanted to “unmask the hypocrisy of the regime’s reforms.”

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt four)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

Despite the threats, Alia reached out to the world. In New York two Albanian diplomats met secretly with U.S. officials at the United Nations to discuss reestablishing diplomatic ties. In May the government opened telephone lines to the West, allowing Albanians to speak directly with relatives abroad for the first time since World War Two. To Albanians’ surprise, the new telephone book included a list of international codes. That month parliament legalized private practice for lawyers and reopened the Ministry of Justice, which was closed in 1968. It removed internment and expulsion as punishments, and reduced the illegal crossing of Albania’s borders from a counter-revolutionary act to a criminal offense. Parliament also redefined the notorious Article 55 of the penal code—“Agitation and Propaganda against the State”—which the state had used for years to imprison and execute critics. An amendment abolished the death penalty for “anti-socialist agitation and propaganda” and narrowed the definition to acts aimed at “overthrowing the state and social order as defined in the constitution.” Criminalization of religious propaganda was removed.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt three)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

Alia’s first major project was to honor his teacher and guide. Hoxha statues rose in Tirana and other towns. In the center of the capital came the colossal white marble pyramid to house the Enver Hoxha Museum.

As statues rose, the economy sank. The government rationed meat, cheese, coffee, butter, and oil, and the quality of those goods got worse. Shoppers stood in lines from 5:00 a.m., and often went home empty-handed. The only vegetable readily available was leeks, and it became a symbol of Albania’s despair. Collectivized to the extreme, the economy had exhausted its possibilities, like a human body burning muscle and fat to survive.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt two)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

In 1967 Hoxha banned religion, as if he were jealous that someone had faith in a force higher than him. He ordered the destruction of mosques, churches, and cloisters and their conversion into sports halls or warehouses. The Catholic cathedral in Shkoder became a basketball arena with “Glory Marxism-Leninism” inscribed on the court in large red letters. Albania was never a religious country, but Hoxha officially declared it the world’s first atheist state. Albanians buried sacred relics or hid them in their homes, where they stayed until freedom of religion returned in 1990.

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hoxha withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, although Albania had not attended a meeting for years. The Ministry of Defense began a colossal project to build an estimated seven hundred thousand concrete, steel-reinforced bunkers. The military put the concrete mushrooms along the coast and borders, on mountain tops, farms, and even city streets. Arrow tips were mounted atop fence posts to thwart parachutists. Too expensive to remove, the bunkers dotted the country years after communism’s fall. Lovers visited them for trysts and poor families used them as homes. Farmers who got back nationalized property spoke of how many bunkers they had received.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt one)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

Under Italian rule, Hoxha lost his teaching job. He moved to Tirana—at the time with less than twenty thousand people—and opened a tobacco shop, which became the secret meeting place of the budding communist movement. The Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito offered help, and under his tutelage the Albanian Communist Party was founded in November 1941. Enver Hoxha, then thirty-three years old, became secretary general. He held the position for the next forty-four years.

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt seven)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

He desperately wants to believe that his son still exists—still exists in some actual sense, not just as a memory—and that what happened to him is somehow part of some larger plan or scheme, and not just a meaningless single event.

What these people believe seems to make that possible. He assumes that that’s what drew his mother here, or something like it. She has never shown any interest in this sort of thing until now. So he understands why she comes here and how it might help here.

He also understands, after a few weeks, that it won’t be able to help him.

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt six)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

They talk for a few more minutes, and then they’re interrupted by the arrival of the main course, at which point the minister turns to the person on the other side of him and István finds himself having to engage with his own other neighbor, an elderly lady who wants something done about immigration.

She’s embarrassed when she understands, after a minute or two, that István is himself a foreigner.

“I don’t mean you, of course,” she says, putting a hand on his arm.

“No, of course nor,” István says.

“We need people like you.”

“Well,” he says. “It’s nice of you to say so.”

“You’re not the problem.”

“I hope not.”

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt five)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

He stands up and goes to one of the windows. A cloud has covered the sun. The water of the lake looks dark and still.

“Have you thought of that?”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that,” he says. Which is true, although it’s also true that he has more often avoided thinking about it.

There’s a long silence.

“You need to do something,” she says.

“I know,” he says.

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt four)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

They walk away.

He watches them go and lights a cigarette.

The last patrons leave at around three thirty. He helps to throw them out. It smells of sweat down there and feels like a sauna after the damp freshness of the street. The lights are on, which makes the place look small. The main stage and the “private” ones at the sides look small and shabby. As he makes his way to Freddy’s office, he passes a few of the girls, leaving in tracksuits and raincoats, with earbuds in their ears and don’t-even-think-about-talking-to-me expressions on their faces.

He doesn’t talk to them.

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt three)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

She asks him about it in detail.

He tells her in detail what happened. That they were taking water to the Ukrainians. That was the sort of thing they did, when they did anything, he tells her—take water to the Ukrainians. There were the white tankers of water, and also some armored personnel carriers to protect them. Riki was on the machine gun of the first armored personnel carrier, which was the lead vehicle of the convoy. István was on the second, with two or three water tankers between them. He tells her that they were nearing a place called Al-Suwaira, which was where the Ukrainians were, when the explosion happened. The road had been swept for explosive devices earlier in the morning but they must have missed that one. If you’re near it, he tells her, not near enough to get hit by the shrapnel but still near it, an explosion isn’t just sound. It’s pressure as well. It knocks you over, you feel like you’ve been physically hit. It fucks up your ears. “Sorry,” he says—the swear word just slipped out. The therapist nods, acknowledging his apology. He lights another cigarette. You can’t hear anything, he tells her. You don’t even hear the explosion really. You experience it as pressure, not as sound. And then there’s all this smoke everywhere. You can’t see anything either. The sense of confusion is hard to describe. The convoy stopped moving. You weren’t supposed to do that. You were supposed to keep moving but the lead vehicle had been hit and the road was blocked and there was all this smoke so that the drivers of the other vehicles couldn’t see where they were going. Some of the APCs started firing back, he tells her, in the general direction of the incoming fire, or where they thought that was. That was when he realized his ears were fucked—when he couldn’t really hear the machine guns, only see their muzzle flashes in the smoke. Anyway, he went through the smoke and helped Riki down from the turret of the lead vehicle and sat on the asphalt with him For a while Riki was still conscious. He told them that it was going to be okay, even though it probably wasn’t and he knew it probably wasn't. He also knew that after that he’d never believe anyone telling him it was going to be okay. Or maybe he would believe them. Maybe he’d want to believe them so much that he would, in the way that Riki may have believed him as they sat there on the asphalt. When Riki lost consciousness he wasn’t sure if he’d died or what.

“Had he died?” the therapist asks him.

“Yeah,” he says.

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt two)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

He doesn’t ask any more questions, and István doesn’t ask him anything about what he’s doing. He’s obviously a doctor.

That’s what he’s done with the last decade or whatever—turned himself into a doctor.

Ten years ago he and this doctor were the same, István thinks.

They were the same.

And now the doctor’s a doctor and he’s . . . whatever he is.

the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt one)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

To the extent that he thinks about it at all, he thinks of the job at the winery as a very temporary thing, something he will do for a few months maybe, just until he finds something else.

Except that he isn’t actually trying to find anything else.

It’s like he’s waiting for something else to find him. Or not even that. He isn’t really thinking about the future at all.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt sixteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Old men are naturally suspicious, see plots. And it would require almost more than the fortitude of a saint not to be affected by the type of attacks which were made on Washington and his administration. Not only had his behavior been condemned because of entirely unfounded distrust of his motives, but what he did had been distorted; and not only had his acts been distorted, but he had been assailed by lies which the perpetrators often knew were total likes. And the vilification appeared in newspapers of national circulation that were semi-official organs of the Republican party.

As long as he had been in office he had tried, although towards the end with sometimes stumbling feet, to walk the path he had charted for himself, the path of complete neutrality between factions at home and belligerents abroad. Once he was out of office and intended to remain so for the rest of his earthly career, moderation ceased to be a matter of state. He permitted himself to espouse extremes. He became at last what he had for so long been accused of being: devotedly pro-Federalist. Since he doubted the intentions of all others, he communicated exclusively with Federalists. He could no longer palliate the efforts of the French government to interfere in American politics; he had become angrily anti-French. In his denunciations of French attacks on American commerce, he no longer pointed out that Britain was also guilty. He came to believe that the leaders of the opposition, patriots who had been his coadjutors and friends, were eager to make the United States a vassal of France: might indeed cooperate with a French invasion.

A French invasion! In 1798, that seemed possible.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt fifteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

During May, 1796, Madison wrote Monroe in cipher, “It is now generally understood that the President will retire, and Jefferson is the object on one side, Adams apparently on the other.” Although the Federalists were worried—“If a storm gather,” Hamilton asked Washington, “how can you retreat?”—Washington wrote firmly that he would “close my public life on March 4 [1797], after which no consideration under heaven that I can foresee shall again draw me from the walks of private life.”

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt thirteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

In another way, which Washington could not foresee, his image was much more grievously damaged. A painful physical disability was being grafted onto his legend so that in the minds of future Americans his attribute—like Saint Catherine’s wheel or Saint Sebastian’s arrows—became ill-fitting false teeth.

Washington did wear clumsy dentures. Only one of his own teeth was in his mouth in 1789 when he presided over the capital in New York. That tooth soon vanished. Washington wore terrifying-looking contraptions, made of substances like hippopotamus ivory. The upper and lower jaws, that were hinged together at the back of the mouth, opened and closed with the assistance of springs. He himself complained that they distorted his lips. However, as he could command the best dentists, he was probably no more disfigured than was then common among the elderly and prosperous.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt thirteen)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

No one then understood how yellow fever was transmitted. Unsuspected by science, mosquitoes took over Philadelphia. In August, 1793, the disease moved on insect wings down the streets from the waterfront, creating the most murderous epidemic in all American history. Hamilton was soon believed to be dying. Those still-living inhabitants who had not fled the city, cowered indoors, the principal movement on the streets being of open carts driven by blacks (Negroes were considered immune) on which sprawled corpses being hurried to the pits which had taken over from the glutted graveyards.

The presidential office, Washington wrote, was “in a manner blockaded by the disorder,” yet word came to him that his presence in the city was one of the few things that gave inhabitants hope. Although he had announced a date for his departure for a Mount Vernon holiday, he decided to remain. However, Martha could not be persuaded to leave without him. Unwilling to expose her and the children to the contagion, he agreed to leave, but not one day sooner than he had previously intended.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt twelve)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Morris was brilliant: the actual wording of the Constitution came from his pen. But Morris was sarcastic to those he considered more stupid than he, and possessed of such a reputation for licentiousness that the leg he had lost in a carriage accident was generally considered to have come off as a result of his jumping out of a lady’s window as her husband came in at the door. He was an inveterate prankster. Those who believed Washington was always proper and grave could not understand why he was intimate with such a man. They did know that Washington relished scapegraces who kept him amused.

As a financier intimately associated with the Hamiltonian circle, Morris belonged to the pro-British faction. Yet, as Washington’s unofficial representative in London, he had followed without deviation the interests of the United States, making reports Washington had used in his efforts to persuade Congress into commercial retaliation. Now, although Washington’s prestige carried the confirmation through, Morris was strongly opposed in the Senate.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt eleven)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Oceans of ink have been spilled in describing the mounting conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton—and, in the process, the fundamentals have tended to become drowned.

Most confusing to the record has been the Marxist interpretation that arose in the 1930’s, which envisions the controversy as an example of “class warfare” waged between Hamilton as a champion of privilege, and Jefferson, who desired laws that would help the underprivileged. This attributes twentieth-century issues to the eighteenth. Those who wished through government action to support the poor in opposition to the rich were in those days known as “levelers.” Far from being a leveler, Jefferson boasted that the nation’s “mass of weight and wealth” supported his ideas. Had a welfare state been thought of during Washington’s Presidency, it would surely have been less sympathetic to Jefferson than Hamilton, since it involved so great an increase in governmental power. The controversy which embroiled the two champions was not basically concerned with the haves and the have-nots. It was between rival economic systems, each of which was aimed at generating its own men of property.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt ten)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

When Congress acted to establish the great departments, it was argued that the provision that the senators must approve the appointments implied that they should also insist on the power to veto dismissal. Such a provision would, by allowing the senators to keep in office cabinet ministers with whom they agreed but who opposed the policies of the President, reduce the President to a figurehead similar to a constitutional monarch. Thus the issue became a rallying ground for all who distrusted a strong executive.

Washington remained silent, but his intimate collaborator, Madison, persuaded the House to vote against empowering the Senate to veto dismissals. The Senate was not so easily persuaded. There was a tie vote there, which the presiding officer, Vice President Adams, broke to preserve the authority of the executive. Who can doubt that, had the President been less popular and trusted than Washington, the decision would have gone the other way, changing the whole direction of the American government.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt nine)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Washington’s most obvious plight did not particularly bother him. Having once been the only soldier in the Continental Army, he was not dismayed to find that, at the opening of the government, he and the Vice President were the only members of the new executive. Their solitary eminence did not draw the two men together. In his fear of tyranny (and perhaps his jealousy of Washington) Adams had fought in the Continental Congress against Washington’s desire to build a professional, long-term army. Adams’s selection as Vice President had been dictated by the old need to balance a Virginia leader with a leader from Massachusetts. Recognizing the political wisdom of the choice, Washington had agreed to it, but he had no intention of working closely with his old opponent, nor did Adams want to work closely with Washington. It lay within the bounds of the Constitution that the Vice President could become the President’s prime minister, but the Washington-Adams hostility placed the Vice Presidency in the shadow whence it has never emerged.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt eight)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

It was surprising the variety of worries that crowded into Washington’s mind. Since he had publicly stated that he would never return to public life, would he be accused of indecision, of devious ambition even? Or, if he stayed home, would he be accused of failing to put his shoulder to the wheel because he wished the American republican experiment to collapse so that he could make himself king? More serious: would the convention be defeated before it started by each state’s binding its delegates with so many instructions that the men from the different regions would be prevented from agreeing on anything? And then there was the fact that his beloved wife was in a state of consternation: she had grounded her happiness, so she tearfully reiterated, on the belief that nothing could possibly happen that would destroy her tranquility by calling her husband back to public life.

Yet, however much Washington repined and struggled, he had no choice once it became clear that the convention presented a solid hope of matching the military victory of the Revolutionary army he had led with a political victory that would not only stabilize the nation but demonstrate for all the world to see that a people’s government was not synonymous with anarchy.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt seven)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

After the definitive peace had been signed, the British announced that they would evacuate New York on November 25, 1783. For once, Washington was willing to take part in a triumphal procession. However, the parade was ridiculously delayed because the British had, in a final mocking gesture, left their flag flying over Fort George with the halyards cut and the pole greased. Not until an indigenous sailor had mounted the pole and substituted an American flag could Washington consummate victory by advancing down the streets. It was as sad an occasion as a joyful one, for the city was desolate and battered, the few inhabitants who came out to cheer were thin and strained. There was a further wait until the British fleet finally sailed out of the harbor. Then Washington ordered a boat to take him across the Hudson to New Jersey. But first he would say farewell to the few officers still in service and to any others residing in the vicinity.

The assurances Washington had given his officers, during that stormy meeting at Newburgh, that they would receive what was due them had, despite his own best efforts, came to nothing. He approached this last parting with a sad and anxious heart. The small group of men who turned as he came in the door of the room at Fraunces Tavern saw that their general’s face was working with strong emotion. He walked over to the table where a collation was laid, tried to eat, but failed. He filled a glass of wine and motioned for the decanters to go around. As the officers saw his hand shake and his lip tremble, the bitterness in their hearts was drowned by love. The men who had fought so hard with Washington and suffered so deeply found tears in their eyes. With tears streaming down his own face, Washington embraced each separately, and then, the height of emotion having become unbearable, walked out of the room.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt six)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Now that independence seemed at hand, the state leaders felt their own urgency: it should be made clear, for the impending future, that the United States was not one nation but thirteen. But state autonomy was not the basis on which the war had been fought. It had been necessary to create a Continental Congress and a Continental Army, and also to incur Continental debts. These debts were not only to the soldiers. Congress also owed much to civilians. There was the currency it had printed, which should be honored, even if at less than face value. There were certificates of indebtedness: bonds and various acknowledgments of loans; paper Washington had, when deprived of more specific means of payment, given to farmers and wagoners; the multitudinous other kinds of paper emitted by a bankrupt government scrambling for existence. Since the poor had been unable to wait, they had usually sold their certificate of indebtedness to speculators for a fraction of the true value. The paper had thus found its way into the hands of large operators. The financial community was as deeply involved as were the soldiers in the national obligations which the states were trying, as they delicately looked the other way, to sweep under the rug.

The fact that the army and the ablest, most prosperous businessmen were being similarly defrauded opened a promising field for common action. The members of the military committee that had been sent to Philadelphia conferred with the leading financiers, particularly Robert and Governeur Morris. It was agreed that the only protection for the creditors, whether civilians or soldiers, was the military strength of the army. The army should, even if peace were declared, refuse to go home until the states agreed to a system by which all federal debts could be paid. If necessary, violence should be threatened to achieve what was basically required: a strong central government that could protect the rights of its creditors. Should military force be used to reform the state legislatures, that would, it was said (and probably often believed), be only a temporary expedient until the necessary changes were achieved. Then the government would be returned to the people. So it was argued. The modern reader will see being groomed and saddled the horses of fascism.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt five)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Washington was not easily appeased. In order to keep from encouraging the enemy and dispiriting from his own followers, he had hidden from the world the shortages from which he had suffered, accepting criticism for what he considered not his fault. For the sake of the unity of the cause, he had bowed his head to many an insult. But the end of his control had come: his anger poured out with all the fury of a flood long restrained by a dam. He encouraged his supporters to harass his enemies with threats of duels. He expressed amusement that Mifflin had to do some fancy footwork to keep from a bloody engagement with the grim, martial General John Cadwallader. Cadwallader actually fought Conway, wounding him in the neck and mouth. Thinking he might die, Conway wrote Washington an abject letter which Washington did not answer. Conway recovered.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt four)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

The British had disappeared. It eventually developed that they had gone to their base at Halifax on Nova Scotia to refit their hysterically loaded ships. But no one doubted that their eventual destination was New York, a city that could have been created by Providence as the stronghold and jumping-off place for a naval power. Manhattan Island was bordered by important rivers. The East River, connecting with Long Island Sound, led to New England. The Hudson was navigable to oceangoing vessels so far north that it could be used to cut the well-settled part of the colonies in half. And the harbor was large enough for any fleet.

Washington reached New York on April 13, 1776, to discover that every advantage the geography there offered a naval power was also a bayonet aimed at such an army as his. Manhattan Island was too long to be defended completely with the forces he had, and so narrow that an army in the little city at the tip might be trapped by a quick march to the opposite shore of soldiers landed from boats above the town. Military strategy clearly indicated that the city should be abandoned to the enemy—or better yet, burned—while a defense line was set up further north on the Hudson, where accommodating highlands dominated the river. But Washington agreed with Congress that in the current political situation, when public opinion had not coalesced in opposition to Great Britain, the effect on morale of abandoning—not to speak of burning—a major city would be disastrous. And so Washington decided to occupy New York as best he could.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt three)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

And so, as the year approached its end, Washington was faced with the necessity of recruiting his army anew. Most of the common soldiers felt that they had done their stint: let others take their places. And efforts to reorganize the haphazardly raised regiments into a force more uniform and efficient disarranged the officer corps. Although no man’s commission was as old as a year, and the differences might be no more than a day—or even a few minutes—officers got into the most acrimonious hassles concerning which had the right to a higher rank because he was the senior. “Such a dearth of public spirit and want of virtue,” Washington cried out, “such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages … such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen.” If only he could justify it “to posterity and my conscience,” Washington would, he explained, abandon settled America to the British and inhabit the wilderness in a wigwam.

On New Year’s Eve so many of the troops went home that all the blockading defenses could not be manned. Although Washington did his best to cover up, the weakness was too widespread to escape the eyes of spies. It seemed certain that the British would attack. He arranged with his officers on what hills far behind the lines the fleeing remnant of his army would reassemble. But the British did not attack. They hoped the rebels would realize how ridiculous they seemed and give up. When Washington celebrated the dawn of 1776 by raising the newly designed American flag, some Britons assumed that it was a flag of surrender.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt two)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

His most extensive adventure grew out of his personal efforts as a lobbyist. He secured confirmation of a confused promise of land made by Dinwiddie to those who had early enlisted in the Virginia Regiment. The area involved was so large it could only be found in the outer wilderness. Washington traveled in the autumn of 1770 again to the Forks of the Ohio—where he had previously seen emptiness there was now a settlement of some twenty cabins called Pittsburgh—and then drifted down the river for eleven days. His objective was the confluence of the Ohio with the Great Kanawha, where he had heard that the land was fine. This journey deep into the almost unexplored wilderness was in some ways a replay of the embassy northward which had opened his public career. There was danger—reports of Indian hostilities and ticklish meetings with braves in war or perhaps hunting dress; there was hardship—snow fell—but this time the impediments were not truly lethal. They added spice to lyricism.

Keeping notes of the appearance of the shores along which they passed, Washington saw an identity of beauty and utility: the taller the trees and the fairer the meadows, the more fertile the land. Deer, buffalo, and wild turkeys abounded. Eventually Washington found and marked out a paradise of rich meadows, towering vegetation, mill sites, vast reaches, boundless skies, where he eventually secured title to thirty thousand acres, most of the tracts “beautifully bordered” by the rivers.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt one)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Yet the Fairfax connection boasted a physical giant who, even if he had never crossed the Alleghenies, had surveyed in the semi-wild Shenandoah Valley. Furthermore, although only twenty-one, George Washington carried the manifest air of one born to command. He was assigned two interpreters: a Dutchman, Jacob van Braam, whose knowledge of French was testified to by the badness of his English; and a fur trader, Christopher Gist, who was to prove less conversant with Indian tongues than he should have been. Add four backwoodsmen of low degree who acted as “servitors,” some riding horses, and a flock of pack horses, and you had the expedition which in October, 1753, already fighting through heavy snow, descended from the mountains into the wild Ohio Valley. The French wilderness masters, so numerous and so familiar with Indian trails and embassies, would have regarded this tiny, amateur force as comic. Yet the tenderfoot who led it was no ordinary man.

Washington soon dashed ahead of his party to where the Monongahela joined the Allegheny to form the lordly Ohio. Although “the Forks of the Ohio” (now Pittsburgh) was the strategic position that controlled thousands of miles of wilderness, he found there no signs of humanity except empty trails. For two days he explored by himself through the tangled forest, seeking, despite his military ignorance, the best location for a fort. His judgment was confirmed by both the French and the English, who were in succession to erect major works at the spot he chose.