James Thomas Flexner
James Thomas Flexner was an American historian and biographer best known for the four-volume biography of George Washington that earned him a National Book Award in Biography and a special Pulitzer Prize. A cum laude graduate of Harvard University, Flexner worked as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune from 1929 until 1931, after which he worked as an executive secretary for the New York City Department of Health before leaving the job the following year in order to devote his full energies to writing.
1 Books Written
After more than two decades, this dramatic and concise single-volume distillation of James Thomas Flexner's definitive four-volume biography "George Washington," which received a Pulitzer Prize citation and a National Book Award for the fourth volume, has itself become an American classic. Now in a new trade paperback edition, this masterful work explores the Father of Our Country - sometimes an unpopular hero, a man of great contradictions, but always a towering historical figure, who remains, as Flexner writes in these pages, "a fallible human being made of flesh and blood and spirit - not a statue of marble and wood... a great and good man." The author unflinchingly paints a portrait of Washington: slave owner, brave leader, man of passion, reluctant politician, and fierce general. His complex character and career are neither glorified nor vilified here; rather, Flexner sets up a brilliant counterpoint between Washington's public and private lives and gives us a challenging look at the man who has become as much a national symbol as the American flag.