By Kevin Seabrooke

Perfectly timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of American independence, this biography offers a comprehensive, meticulously researched portrait of the man who embodies the very concept of what it is to be American—Founding Father and first president George Washington.

Brands—who likes to say, “as a historian, I don’t know what’s going to happen five years from now, but once it happens, I’m going to explain why it was inevitable”—incorporates excerpts from diaries, letters, speeches and publications to illuminate not only Washington, the man, but his times as well.

The holder of the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, Brands has written more than 30 books and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist—The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000) and Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008).

American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington (H. W. Brands, Doubleday, New York, NY, 640 pp., May 12, 2026 $40 HC)