You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
By: Alexis Coe / Narrated By: Brittany Pressley, Alexis Coe
Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
Okay—Just cuz something sorely ticks ya off, does NOT mean it’s automatically Leftist-Cancel-Culture; not when most of it’s true
I’ll just get it out the way: Author Alexis Coe AIN’T no grand historian. Oh my gosh, I do sooo love a good Bio, am all OVER many a Well Known Figure, and have ya seeen Audiobook Accomplice’s History sections? I mean, Jiminy H. Freaking Cricket: Big Sis and I have to create new subcategories cuz flippin’ Squarespace cuts off at 30, and we have waaaaaay more than that in certain categories!!!
So, just yeeesh! it with your: You Never Forget Your First is What America’s Worst is Teaching Our American Children Today. Just ix-nay on even a single more ancel-cay ulture-cay. Done! Finished! ‘Nuff Said!!!
If you’re going to dislike this, if you’re going to shrug it off as unimportant, do so for its/Coe’s many MANY flaws as a historian. Dismal, really. I get it; she’s doing her Today’s Demographic Shaping the World Thing (Read: Lists as sound bites, important details as sound bites, reeeeeally important events dismissed in favor of single lines as… sound bites. I mean, our little audiobook club soooorely rolled our eyes when we were doing Bygone Badass Broads as we were looking for a celebration of important figures). Here we have George Washington, THE George Washington, FIRST President of our freaking country for cripes sake, and we get the experiences at Valley Forge as a >meh< ? Seriously, Ms. Coe; you’re bashing the multitude of men who write history, and you’re trying to get us to forget what a game-changer the Crossing of the Delaware as a MUUUUCH-needed morale booster to sorely disheartened troops was.
Not only that, Coe pretty much chronicles Every. Single. Human Failing the man had, the gross missteps he made as President (Tho’ I DO admit there were some fairly unknown details she reeeeally expanded upon), and she did so much in the way of hinting: No indication the man dallied outside the marriage bed… but that doesn’t meeeean there wasn’t nonconsensual sex with enslaved women… Lemme give you a hint as to how it works as I’ve seen in history: You deal in facts, not presumptions.
Okay, so now onto the huuuuge FACTS that the Much-Afraid Public have slammed: Jeez, the man owned slaves. And getting riled up about it, shouting that it’s been taken Out of the Context of the Times where it was de rigueur to own ‘em? Good cow, that’s like saying guards at Nazi death camps were just being good citizens when they sicced dogs on humans; just bein’ a good German and all that happy BS. It doesn’t matter WHAT is normal; if you can’t see another being as human, with dignity, who can suffer, who probably does NOT enjoy being whipped, or worked to the bone, who CERtainly grieves when family members are willed to different farms (Looking at you, Martha, after George’s death… Coe goes into THAT), then I truly fear for you. Oh BOY does this cover his treatment of slaves, his indifference, his cowardice as a President and landowner.
Yeh yeh the economy couldn’t take emancipation yeh, as it’s always been. I mean, heck: I come from a state where our Lieutenant Governor suggested that The Greatest Generation should happily die of Covid for the sake of the economy, so p’raps I’m a bit touchy about what-all is done in the name of $$$. Washington and his cronies were land-rich and cash-poor, so they HAD to get everything they could outta their enslaved inhabitants.
You wanna learn about George Washington? Go to a real historian for biographical works that actually say something (Yup, it’ll take more than 200 pages, just do it if you’re interested). If you wanna learn about a few Founding Fathers and their enslavement of people. Gosh, it was done sooo much better in In the Shadow of Liberty by Kenneth C. Davis.
If, however, you want The Most Heart-wrenching Last Line EVER? Okay, I’ll give Coe that. That last line was a true slug to the gut.
And Brittany Pressley? Don’t worry ‘bout it; you did fine…
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