In 1748, at the age of 16, George Washington (1732-1799) first crested the Blue Ridge as part of a surveying mission into the Shenandoah Valley. in 1753, at the age of 21, he traveled over 500 miles west from the Virginia coastal settlements on a mission for Governor Dinwiddie of Colonial Virginia to contact the French rulers of interior America. Many wilderness journeys followed, including military missions during the French and Indian War and expeditions for land speculators. This book closely examines these travels and their impact upon the man who would become the first President of the United States. “Peter Stark has a remarkable ability to combine brilliant storytelling with thoughtful analysis. Young Washington is a wonderful book—as engrossing as it is informative.” - J. William T. Youngs. “A thrilling adventure that vaults the reader into the dangerous and volatile frontier world that indelibly shaped Washington’s life and leadership.” - David Preston. “A provocative, inspiring, and disarmingly honest examination of how the character of America’s greatest general and president was forged, tempered, and polished inside the crucible of what defined America during its dark and promising moment of emergence: the wilderness, the land itself.”- Kevin Fedarko. This is Stark’s fourth book. He lives in Montana with his wife and their children.
New York: HarperCollins, 2018. 514 pages with an Index, Bibliography, Notes, maps, and 16 pages of photos in full color. Hardback in dust jacket