The Art of Manliness - #366： Teach Yourself Like George Washington

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast where George

00:00:18.520 Washington has become an archetype of the great American leader. Subsequent generals

00:00:22.360 and presidents have all been compared to Washington and in the American mythos they

00:00:25.720 all fall short of this founder's military and political genius. What many people don't

00:00:29.540 know about Washington however is that his formal schooling abruptly ended age 11 with the death

00:00:34.080 of his father and he was largely self-taught. My guest today wrote an intellectual biography of

00:00:38.420 Washington and how this autodidactic rose to American apotheosis despite lacking the classical

00:00:43.340 education of his revolutionary contemporaries. Her name is Dr. Adrienne Harrison and her book is A

00:00:47.980 Powerful Mind, The Self-Education of George Washington. Today on the show Adrienne discusses how her time

00:00:52.800 as a combat officer in Iraq led her to researching and writing her doctoral dissertation about

00:00:56.920 Washington's intellectual journey. We then discuss why Washington's education was deficient compared

00:01:01.040 to other founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, how this lack made Washington extremely

00:01:05.600 self-conscious and what he did to mitigate ever revealing it. Dr. Harrison then takes us through

00:01:09.840 how Washington charted his own education throughout the different stages of his life and career to help

00:01:14.020 him become a wealthy landowner, successful general, and the first executive of the United States.

00:01:18.600 Adrienne also takes us on a tour of Washington's personal study and library and what it says about his

00:01:22.920 learning style. We enter discussion on lessons we can take from Washington on maintaining a passion

00:01:27.020 for lifelong learning. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash powerful mind.

00:01:32.800 And Dr. Harrison joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:43.000 Adrienne Harrison, welcome to the show.

00:01:45.540 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:01:47.060 So you wrote a book, a biography of George Washington, and now there's tons of biographies.

00:01:52.900 He's probably one of the most written about people besides, you know, Jesus or Buddha or

00:01:57.080 something like that. But you got really niche. You got really unique with your biography. You

00:02:00.960 wrote a biography of his reading habits and his sort of self-education. So I'm curious,

00:02:06.400 what led you down the path to write about that specific part of George Washington's life?

00:02:11.060 Well, I mean, I'll start by saying that I've always been interested in Washington's life,

00:02:14.920 going back to when I was about six years old. When I was six, my parents bought a VCR. I'm a child of the

00:02:21.580 eighties. And my parents bought a VCR and they started taping everything that they could possibly

00:02:26.640 find on TV. And they had taped this six hour miniseries on the life of George Washington that

00:02:32.340 was produced by General Motors. And it had a lot of eighties names in it. And anyway, I was homesick

00:02:37.480 from school one day and I started watching this miniseries. And from that point on, I was hooked.

00:02:42.840 I was just fascinated. I mean, as a little kid, I was kind of fascinated by, you know, this really cool

00:02:47.420 guy on a, on a horse doing amazing things, but I never lost the interest. And as I got older and I,

00:02:53.660 you know, was making my way through school, the reasons why I was interested in Washington changed

00:02:58.020 a little bit. And then when I was, when I was in the army, after graduating from West Point, I was

00:03:03.200 in the invasion of Iraq as a, as a young lieutenant in 2003. And I was a platoon leader in the 82nd

00:03:09.920 Airborne Division. And we had been out on a mission, my platoon and I, and we had gotten ambushed and

00:03:17.320 everything was fine. But we made our way back to our, you know, base camp. And, and I was thinking,

00:03:23.160 you know, that night kind of, you know, processing everything, everybody had their hobbies that they

00:03:27.140 did little things to stay sane over there. And one of mine was, was reading and I had a nice supply of

00:03:32.740 books from my family and friends back home. And I was reading this book that someone had sent me

00:03:37.120 about a new one that had come out about Washington. And I began thinking about him and that at the

00:03:43.120 same age, roughly that I was, I mean, I was 22, he was 21 at the time. He had his first engagement of

00:03:50.020 being under fire as a young officer. And I was thinking about how I had gotten through that day

00:03:55.020 and how we were very fortunate in my unit that I didn't lose anybody or anything like that. But I

00:04:00.760 began thinking about Washington and how did he do it? I mean, I had the benefit of four years of West

00:04:06.360 Point Education behind me. I was in a, you know, the most professional army that's ever existed, best

00:04:11.320 trained, best equipped, lots of experience, voices of experience around me to kind of guide me in my

00:04:16.820 decision making. And as I kind of, you know, shaped my own leadership style. But how did Washington do it?

00:04:23.040 Because he was my age with absolutely no education, no experience around him. And his first attempt at

00:04:30.560 leading was disastrous, but he had come back from it. And he was, you know, obviously enormously

00:04:36.300 successful. So that question was kind of in the back of my mind for the next couple of years. And then I was

00:04:42.400 selected to go back to West Point and teach history. And before you can do that, the army sends you to

00:04:47.560 graduate school. So I was in grad school, and I was kicking around ideas for a dissertation. And I came back to my

00:04:54.920 army question of Washington's education and how he did it. How did he forge this successful career as a

00:05:00.380 military leader? And so I convinced my dissertation committee to let me pursue this. Because one thing

00:05:06.620 that's fascinating about Washington is that he was not just a founding father. He had to lead the

00:05:13.500 founding fathers. So, you know, leading men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin,

00:05:19.160 some of the most towering intellects of his time. And Washington had what today would be about a

00:05:26.180 fourth grade education in terms of formal schooling. So how did he do it in politics? How did he do it in

00:05:32.680 the military where he was, you know, entirely, you know, on his own kind of doing things differently than

00:05:38.700 even the British officers around him were doing? So that's kind of how I got the idea. Then I had to

00:05:44.500 sell it to my dissertation committee, who absolutely hated it at first.

00:05:51.860 Why'd they hate it? I mean, it sounds like, I mean, when you described it there, if I was on the

00:05:55.140 committee, like, that's really interesting. But why did they hate it?

00:05:58.200 They didn't think there was enough, originally, they didn't think there was enough kind of new

00:06:02.680 material about Washington. I mean, as you said, at the start of this interview, he is probably,

00:06:07.760 aside from Jesus, the most talked about, most studied, biographied man in all of human history.

00:06:13.620 So what else is there to say? And, you know, I had to really convince them that there was

00:06:17.840 something original here. And the thing that's original is if you look at all the other Washington

00:06:23.000 biographies that are out there, starting with the ones that were written in his lifetime,

00:06:26.880 all the way up until, you know, a couple years ago, they all dismiss the fact or just overlook it

00:06:33.180 entirely, that he had this enormous library at Mount Vernon at his home. And nobody thought he was a

00:06:39.960 scholar. In fact, a lot of them thought he was kind of, I don't know, like a, like a dumb jock, 0.99

00:06:45.540 you know, this guy that, you know, he looked good on a horse, he was good at riding a horse. And, 0.97

00:06:50.140 you know, he was tall, so he was bound to be leading something. And that kind of explained his

00:06:54.060 greatness. But there was this huge resource that no one had ever touched. And it was right under

00:06:59.240 everybody's noses the whole time. And so I really had to, to, to sell that to my committee. And then

00:07:04.980 they're like, okay, well, you know, if you think you can do it, go ahead, go write a book and come

00:07:09.660 back when you're done. So, so I was fortunate that they let me do it.

00:07:15.360 All right. So let's, there's a lot to unpack there. So as you said, I don't think a lot of

00:07:18.300 people knows about Washington, but he, yeah, wasn't well-educated. Why didn't he get the sort of

00:07:24.340 traditional classical education that a lot of the, the other founding fathers received?

00:07:29.480 Well, Washington, he was not born into enormous wealth. I mean, he was born into what today would

00:07:36.540 be like solidly middle-class. And there were plans initially when he was a young boy to,

00:07:42.420 to send him to school in England as his father and his elder two half brothers had been educated in

00:07:49.660 England, but his father died when Washington was 11. And so that pretty much killed that plan

00:07:54.680 altogether. They did that. And George Washington as the third son of his father gained an inheritance

00:08:01.700 when he, when his father died, but not an enormous amount of money or land. So he didn't have the money

00:08:06.620 for this big European education. And his mother was left as a single mother to, to him and the rest of

00:08:14.200 his siblings that were all very young at the time. And his mother just would not hear of him going away

00:08:21.060 to school. So that, that kind of put the, uh, the tin lid on, on his future education. He did have

00:08:28.080 a couple of private tutors in his adolescence, but really that was it. So, you know, he set off on this

00:08:35.020 path of trying to improve himself because I thoroughly believe that the ambition to be big and important in

00:08:42.060 society was always there from the time he was a small boy. But despite that ambition, was he

00:08:47.160 self-conscious about his lack of education? Oh, absolutely. I mean, one thing that you learn

00:08:52.200 about studying Washington is that for all of his greatness, we kind of now look back at him and we

00:08:57.260 think of him more as the statue or as the stern face in the painting rather than a real flesh and

00:09:02.700 blood person. Washington, the man was incredibly thin-skinned, incredibly susceptible to criticism.

00:09:10.640 And so all of his flaws, which he considered his, uh, he called his education defective. That was his

00:09:16.780 word. He did his best to hide from public view. In fact, everything that we know or that we kind of

00:09:22.660 commonly think about, uh, about Washington and kind of the American memory of him is because he wanted

00:09:29.420 it that way. And the, uh, the lack of the education was something that would have, you know, that would

00:09:35.240 have made him stand out like a sore thumb among the men that he was trying to be a leader of. I mean,

00:09:40.960 everybody around him, if you go back even before his, um, real international fame as, uh, as the

00:09:46.640 revolutionary leader and first president, go back to his early adulthood in Virginia. And he's trying

00:09:52.960 to make his way as a, as a young member of the house of Burgesses at pretty much every other member

00:09:58.620 around him, minus a couple were all university educated, either in, uh, at William and Mary right

00:10:05.940 there in Williamsburg or back in England. Most of them were attorneys and, you know, Washington could

00:10:11.660 not possibly hope to hold a candle to that. So he tried to do things that would mask that defective

00:10:18.060 education. I mean, he tried to learn as much as he could privately, but then he would do his best to

00:10:23.220 kind of steer clear of intellectual conversations. He would never walk up on Thomas Jefferson and George

00:10:29.360 Wythe talking about Virginia law. He would stare way clearer that and just go find a pretty girl to dance 0.84

00:10:35.100 with instead, because he was very good at that. So it's interesting how Washington throughout his

00:10:40.840 life, really from his adolescence to right through the end of his life was very conscious about shaping

00:10:49.380 how people saw him. And it was always done in a way that would enhance his strengths and minimize or

00:10:56.840 even make invisible his weaknesses. So let's talk about this autodidactism of Washington. When did

00:11:04.700 people, when can we start seeing it appear in his life? Was it at a very young age?

00:11:10.660 Uh, yeah, it was probably around the age of about 12 to 14 years old. I mean, the thing that he's the

00:11:16.820 most famous for at that young age is the fact that he copied out the rules of civility and decent

00:11:21.760 behavior, which was a really old, uh, 200 years old at the time manual for princes on how to behave

00:11:29.800 in public and, uh, how you get dressed, how you speak, how you sit, stand Washington as this, as a,

00:11:36.960 you know, preteen boy got ahold of this book somehow and copied it word for word, partly to probably work

00:11:43.260 on his penmanship and partly because he wanted to learn how to act in polite society because living

00:11:49.800 with his mother at, uh, at Ferry Farm, which was his inheritance from his father, his mother was a

00:11:55.640 domineering woman. They did not get along and she shunned everything to do with polite society. 1.00

00:12:01.820 So he really wasn't going to learn a lot of the kind of practical life lessons about how to be a,

00:12:07.980 you know, a gentleman, how to behave and, you know, how to move among society. He was not going to learn

00:12:13.040 that from her. And there weren't too many other white adults around him in the immediate, in his

00:12:19.080 immediate home and an area to teach him that. So he started out with that and then he got into the

00:12:24.880 surveying as a way to make money because it became very clear to Washington at a, by the time he was

00:12:30.400 about 14, 15 years old, that his mother was not going to hand over his inherited property when he

00:12:37.200 came of age and he had the well-developed Washington family instinct for real estate. And he wanted to

00:12:44.380 acquire land because land in the 18th century, in 18th century Virginia was money. You know, you could

00:12:50.980 develop it, you could rent it to people, you know, you could live on it yourself and become a farmer.

00:12:56.740 So Washington wanted money, he wanted land, and without a lot of society connections to help him,

00:13:03.920 what he decided to do was kind of hone in on his math ability. He was a pretty good math student

00:13:10.200 and he found his father's old surveying tools left in a shed on the farm. And he borrowed from some

00:13:18.000 neighbors, a couple books about the basics of surveying, and he taught himself all of the

00:13:23.660 fundamental skills. And then he apprenticed himself to a couple of Virginia surveyors and he started

00:13:30.280 doing plots for people. And so he brought him his first cash from with that he bought his first land,

00:13:37.060 but also he then started to meet landowners in Virginia, the people that were that next

00:13:42.740 social rung up the ladder. And he impressed them with his work ethic, with his accuracy,

00:13:49.400 and they could see in him this ambition. And there were a few, most notably the Fairfaxes,

00:13:56.680 whom his oldest half-brother married into, that saw this boy and saw the potential in him. And they

00:14:02.520 kind of took him under their wing and they kind of mentored him through his teen years. So you can see

00:14:08.980 the kind of the self-taught philosophy that he was kind of dabbling in as a 14-year-old

00:14:14.340 really started to pay off quickly. So it was something that he really just kept up throughout

00:14:19.280 the rest of his life. Right. And we'll talk about how this plays out later on in his life. But I

00:14:23.780 already, I guess the reading philosophy that Washington had wasn't like Jefferson, who would

00:14:29.140 just read the Stoics and the classics just for the heck of it, right? Yeah. Washington read because

00:14:35.000 he had a problem or he needed something and he read for that. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Washington

00:14:40.540 throughout his life is a practical reader. You know, the idea of cultivating knowledge for knowledge

00:14:46.500 sake, like kind of, as you said, with Jefferson or even a Benjamin Franklin, Washington had no time

00:14:51.800 for that. He was trying to, you know, always better himself and his position in society. So that was

00:14:58.660 more of the, you know, the surveying skills, the farming skills, the military skills that he was

00:15:03.540 trying to get practical knowledge about. So that was kind of his approach. And Washington was also

00:15:10.060 limited by the fact that he never learned any foreign languages. He could not read or write in

00:15:15.380 any language other than English. So a lot of literature that, you know, Jefferson and Franklin

00:15:21.220 were reading and were enjoying, a lot of that was in French. A lot of it was in Italian. And

00:15:26.500 Washington really just had no, he didn't have the skills for it, nor did he seemingly have any

00:15:31.180 interest to learn the languages that would kind of unlock the key to that, that kind of more

00:15:36.880 artistic world. He just didn't have a use for it. Right. But that lack of language education

00:15:41.900 kind of bit him in the rear later on in his military career, when he was a commander in the

00:15:48.080 British army during the French and I think the French and Indian Wars, I believe. Yeah. Like he

00:15:53.980 couldn't speak French and there was like some incident where there's some guy surrendered and he brought

00:15:58.540 over the terms of surrender, but he couldn't read French because it was in French. And then somebody

00:16:03.380 signed away something and it was like, actually it wasn't surrender. It was something actually

00:16:07.000 completely wrong. Yeah. So yeah, Washington's inability to speak French, he never really, this

00:16:13.400 is kind of the one time that he did not learn his lesson and go out and rectify his language skills or

00:16:20.540 even get a reliable translator. Twice as a young officer in the, at the outset of his military career

00:16:26.400 in the French and Indian war, he, he was left exposed for not having the, the French speaking

00:16:33.100 ability. His, his first foray into combat operations was at a place called Jumonville's Glen. And there

00:16:40.620 was a, basically Washington had his regiment of Virginia militia out, out on the kind of the frontier

00:16:47.160 of Virginia, which is kind of like now would be in a kind of the West Virginia, Pennsylvania area.

00:16:53.220 And their mission was to sit out on the frontier and observe and report back to Williamsburg to

00:17:00.520 the governor. If they saw any French activity in the area, there was no war going on yet. And so

00:17:06.800 Washington being the young, young officers eager to do something. I mean, everyone, I mean, when I was

00:17:12.540 a young officer in the army, you know, you're given these people to be in charge of, and you feel like

00:17:17.260 everybody's staring at you and everybody's expecting you to actually do something and do something

00:17:23.360 glorious. And, and so these orders were not really appealing to someone as aggressive and ambitious

00:17:30.020 as Washington was. And so when he got a report that there were some, a party of French soldiers

00:17:37.400 heading in his direction, he decided he was going to do something about it, not follow his orders and

00:17:42.480 just send a messenger back to Williamsburg. But he took a detachment of his men with some of his

00:17:49.060 Native American allies out into the woods. They stalked them, they found these guys and surrounded

00:17:55.880 them and started shooting. And it probably only lasted for about 10 minutes, this, this little battle.

00:18:04.720 And when they, and you know, when, if you ever have been around or you see a reenactment and you see

00:18:10.080 muskets being fired, it only takes one or two rounds for the entire area to be completely filled with 0.91

00:18:16.300 gun smoke in the air. And so the air was thick with this. There were leaves on the trees. It was kind of,

00:18:23.060 you know, the weather was not great. And so Washington really couldn't see what was going on.

00:18:28.340 And as this kind of this short little action unfolded, the Native Americans kind of took 0.98

00:18:34.440 control of the situation and started hacking apart and murdering these French wounded soldiers

00:18:42.340 that the, that the colonists hadn't actually totally killed. And so Washington standing there

00:18:47.560 as the smoke clears, and there's this one French officer that's kind of propped up against the tree

00:18:52.520 who had been shot in the abdomen. And in those days, if you were a gut shot like that,

00:18:57.220 you were going to die. There was no question. It was just a matter of when this guy knew he was 0.94

00:19:01.360 going to die, but he was begging and pleading for the lives of his, of his surviving men to be spared.

00:19:08.020 But the problem was Washington couldn't understand a single word he was saying,

00:19:11.720 because he was only speaking French and Washington didn't have a translator around him either.

00:19:17.420 So this guy's clearly pleading, but as Washington standing there trying to figure out what to do next,

00:19:23.540 the leader of his Indian allies kind of elbowed him out of the way, walked up to this Frenchman

00:19:30.320 and said, uh, symbolically, you are no longer my father, meaning that the, uh, these Indians had 0.97

00:19:37.140 at one point been allies with the French, but that was clearly broken. So he says, you were no longer

00:19:42.580 my father. And he took a hatchet and hacked open this guy's head and washed his hands in the man's

00:19:50.380 brains. That man was actually an ambassador. So he had diplomatic immunity. He was not a soldier. 0.69

00:19:59.160 The soldiers he had with him were really just a, an escort. And so Washington by hat, by, uh, leading

00:20:06.720 this little party that turned out to be an ambush actually gave the French the legal right to start

00:20:15.020 a war with great Britain. So kind of, you know, every once in a while in history, you find, uh,

00:20:20.440 the reason for a war happening comes down to one person. The seven years war, otherwise known as the

00:20:25.860 French and Indian war was started by George Washington and his inability to speak French.

00:20:30.900 So fast forward a little bit after that, the French find out what happened in this Glenn. There

00:20:35.600 was a one survivor who kind of scurried away into the woods and made his way back to the, uh,

00:20:40.620 his French outpost. And as word gets back to France of what's happening, the French commander

00:20:48.120 on the ground in North America sent a larger force after Washington. And this is, this becomes the

00:20:55.580 battle of, uh, Fort Necessity. Washington's really terrible little ramshackle fort in the, uh, in the

00:21:01.880 middle of the woods. And Washington loses this battle kind of predictably. If you saw it, he was in

00:21:08.280 completely the wrong place. It's raining. His men were so terrified. They'd never been under fire

00:21:13.700 before. These were untrained militia soldiers that many of them just decided to get drunk instead. I

00:21:18.940 mean, if you're going to go down, if you're going to die, you might as well die drunk. And so they

00:21:22.860 weren't really fighting back and it becomes clear to Washington and his, uh, his top officers around

00:21:28.880 him that, you know, they really have to surrender if they've got any chance of saving what's left of

00:21:33.840 their unit. So he signs this surrender document that he, his kind of closest thing to a translator

00:21:40.900 brought back to him in the rain. And he didn't realize that, you know, he was so hung up on the

00:21:47.320 idea that this surrender document allowed him to keep his flag and keep his drums, which was a big

00:21:53.860 thing back then. I mean, it was, it was like saying that he was surrendering with honor. He was so stuck

00:21:59.440 on that fact and thought he had actually done something, you know, pretty good, kind of salvaging

00:22:04.840 what he could, what honor he could out of a bad situation. He didn't realize because he couldn't read

00:22:10.340 the French himself that the rest of the document said it was a confession basically of the murder of

00:22:18.240 this ambassador in that Glen in the woods. So, you know, he just signed his name to a document saying,

00:22:25.900 yep, I murdered this ambassador. So it was exactly the proof that the French government wanted

00:22:30.580 to go ahead and commence this war with Great Britain that had been kind of in the offing for

00:22:36.700 a while. Washington just went ahead and handed it to them. So yeah, not a great start. Not a great

00:22:42.280 start, but how did he respond to that? Did he go to books to like overcome that or did he just not

00:22:48.200 learn from that and just, just kind of plowed ahead? He kind of just plowed ahead. I mean, really the,

00:22:54.200 the lesson that he took away from it was not so much that he should learn a foreign language.

00:22:58.740 Because when we think about it, that's a pretty daunting task. I mean, you know, in an era, you

00:23:03.480 know, more than 250 years before Rosetta Stone existed, that could make it nice and easy for him

00:23:09.240 to learn French and the privacy of his own home. He, uh, he really didn't have anyone who could teach

00:23:14.520 him. So instead he kind of turned his attention to what he should, what the other things that he should

00:23:20.240 be learning, like how to lead troops and how to train troops. He became fixated on the fact that

00:23:26.840 as he looked back on the battle of Fort Necessity, that not so much about the surrender document,

00:23:32.780 but about the fact that his soldiers got drunk instead of fighting back. And so he, he threw himself

00:23:39.800 into trying to learn how to train and discipline and lead troops the British way. So he had consulted

00:23:47.680 his, uh, his mentor, Colonel Fairfax, and he had, who had some ties into the British military

00:23:54.220 establishment. And as the French and Indian war began to unfold and the British sent a regular

00:23:59.700 army over to Virginia, Washington volunteered to serve under the commanding officer, a guy named

00:24:05.760 General Braddock. And he, Braddock started teaching him, introducing him to the kind of the, the key

00:24:11.860 books that young British cadets and officers would read. And so he, uh, Washington begins this

00:24:19.880 military centric self-study as a, as a young officer. And as he became commander of the Virginia

00:24:26.520 regiment, he began telling his officers that they needed to read. So he was trying to buy multiple

00:24:33.300 copies of these books for his officers. And there's a, there's a pretty famous written order that I quote

00:24:39.160 in the book where he says to his officers in the Virginia regiment, having no opportunity to learn

00:24:44.580 from example, let us read. And that's kind of how he applied himself for the rest of his military

00:24:51.580 career after that. And how did, what kind of reader was Washington? Was he, did he just read or did he

00:24:57.180 have like a pencil in hand, making notes in the margins? What, what did, what were you able to figure

00:25:03.120 out from that? And it would have been great for me writing this book if he had taken notes with a,

00:25:08.380 with a pen, but in the margins, but he really didn't do that. He seemed to, with a couple of

00:25:13.720 exceptions, he mostly just seemed to read the way that, you know, anybody would just kind of pick up

00:25:18.580 a book and read without kind of taking that scholarly approach. The only times that you, that I really

00:25:23.720 found instances of him writing in the margins, there's really two. One of them was a book about

00:25:28.740 farming. It was a French book about farming that had been translated into English. And he was,

00:25:34.100 you can see in his copy of the book where he was trying to convert the French measurements into

00:25:39.900 English measurements. And, and he was taking notes about how he was going to experiment based on the

00:25:45.340 things he was reading, both in the margins of the book and in his journal that he kept. I mean, as the

00:25:51.100 journal, the diaries that he kept throughout his life were really more about farming than they were about

00:25:55.340 his private thoughts and about his family. And so you could really see him trying to actually apply

00:26:01.300 the knowledge that he was, the stuff he was reading, the way a student does doing their

00:26:05.760 homework. That was one instance. The other one was much later in life when he was president.

00:26:11.320 You know, as I said earlier, he was very susceptible to criticism. And during his presidency, he had sent

00:26:17.420 James Monroe off to Paris to be an ambassador, and then later had to recall Monroe based on the way

00:26:24.340 that the diplomatic scene was changing. And Monroe was so incensed that Washington recalled him that he

00:26:31.700 wrote a book that condemned Washington's presidency, basically said that Washington was an old fool that 0.99

00:26:39.020 didn't know what he was doing. And so Washington gets a hold of this book. And you can see, I saw his 0.99

00:26:44.460 copy of it when I was doing my research, and you could see like kind of the anger in his pen, because you

00:26:50.800 could see like the pen strokes get heavier. Like he was pushing on the paper a lot more writing like

00:26:55.600 wrong, never said that. And you know, he was just tearing into this thing as a piece of slander. So

00:27:01.880 you could, it was kind of interesting to see the actual anger, the way that somebody today, if you,

00:27:06.900 you know, are angry at something, and you're writing with a ballpoint pen, and you press in,

00:27:10.940 and you almost tear the paper, because you're pressing so hard, it was kind of the same thing. So it was

00:27:15.300 interesting. But other than that, he just seemed to read.

00:27:17.600 Just seemed to read. So again, he, when he's a commander in the British military,

00:27:22.400 he was reading to be a better commander, again, very practical. I'm curious, were you able to find

00:27:27.700 how Washington's reading helped turned him into an American, right? How did, did any of his reading

00:27:33.760 help transition him from being, thinking of himself as a British citizen, as a, as a, you know,

00:27:38.900 a rebel, basically, against the crown? Because like, you know, Jefferson and all these other guys,

00:27:42.740 they're reading Locke, and then there's Thomas Paine, kind of getting very philosophical,

00:27:46.540 highfalutin. I imagine Washington wasn't really reading that, but was there any, did his reading

00:27:53.180 help him decide, I'm going to be an American now?

00:27:56.420 Yeah, I mean, his reading, and the fact that what he was reading was judged as not being good enough,

00:28:03.120 and Washington became an American, I would, I would argue earlier than a lot of the other founders,

00:28:10.260 other than maybe John Adams. I think John Adams saw the, the writing on the wall about independence

00:28:14.660 fairly early in the, in the game. But Washington, the, the moment for him, where I argue he becomes

00:28:21.600 an American, and kind of breaks with this British colonial identity that he had grown up with,

00:28:27.860 was towards the end of his career in the Virginia Regiment, the one thing that Washington was,

00:28:32.900 was really chasing after was a commission in the British Army. The Virginia Regiment, it was kind of

00:28:39.160 like having a, like a National Guard unit, and he, and Washington was trying to become active duty,

00:28:44.340 and in more modern terms. But Washington wanted to be a regular British red-coated officer,

00:28:50.320 and it was something that General Braddock had apparently promised Washington before Braddock was

00:28:56.320 killed, or in the, in, during, in the, in the war on the frontier. Washington did not forget that Braddock had

00:29:02.700 promised him this, and so he begins to lobby Braddock's successors for this British commission.

00:29:10.320 And if you read Washington's writing during this time, it's almost painful to read. I mean, he's really

00:29:15.300 sucking up to these people, and he's playing up his, his strengths to almost absurd levels as he's trying 0.93

00:29:22.220 to brown nose for this commission. And he begs Governor Dinwiddie for leave so he can go to 0.99

00:29:28.600 Philadelphia and meet the newly appointed commander, British commander-in-chief in North America, a guy

00:29:34.880 named Lord Loudoun. And Loudoun is an aristocrat, very well-educated, classically educated in Britain,

00:29:43.660 and, you know, Dinwiddie does not want to let Washington go. He just, he knows that this is not

00:29:48.820 going to pan out, but Washington's so annoying about asking for leave that finally he just gives in,

00:29:54.840 and his, his actual letter to Washington said, I cannot conceive the, the good that you think is

00:30:01.040 going to come from this, but since you're so insistent, fine, go. And Washington gets his

00:30:06.580 appointment with, with Lord Loudoun, and Loudoun, instead of hearing Washington out, Washington had

00:30:12.880 all these plans for how to win the war in North America, how to really, you know, take back the

00:30:18.720 territory that, that the French had gained on the frontier and kind of what's now Pennsylvania

00:30:23.800 around Pittsburgh. Washington had a whole campaign plan worked out based on the lessons he had learned

00:30:30.140 from the Braddock campaign and his other service, and Loudoun didn't want to hear any of it, and

00:30:34.860 instead started asking him questions about what books he had read. And so, you know, Washington was

00:30:40.400 answering, well, I read this one, but, oh, but you, I see you read, I see you read Bland's Treaties, but you

00:30:45.640 didn't read this book, and you didn't read that book. And so Loudoun dismisses Washington as this

00:30:51.860 uneducated provincial. And at that moment, Washington knows that his dream, his lifelong dream

00:30:59.360 of wearing a British uniform is never, ever going to happen, because he's not educated enough, and

00:31:06.140 he's not really, he's of British descent, but he's an American. And he's never, so he's never going to 0.83

00:31:12.660 have a title, and he's never going to have the wealth that it takes to buy that British commission,

00:31:18.120 because that's how you got promoted in the British Army. You, your connections, your, your family name

00:31:22.320 might get you in, but if you wanted to be promoted, you had to purchase your commission. Washington

00:31:27.000 didn't have that kind of money. So, um, the dream was over, and I think at that point, before this,

00:31:33.840 the French and Indian War is even over, Washington, in his mind, has, like, broken that British-American

00:31:40.820 identity, and now he's just a, he's a Virginian at that point, an American. The term American really

00:31:47.840 wasn't used yet, but, I mean, he would identify himself as a Virginian. And he turns away from the

00:31:53.260 Virginia regiment, he resigns his commission, he marries Martha, and throws himself into his next

00:31:59.420 great pursuit, which is becoming one of the wealthiest plant, and most successful planters in

00:32:05.220 Virginia. Yeah, I think that's so interesting, that, you know, the reason why he decided to become

00:32:09.620 American wasn't for some, like, abstract ideal. It was, like, just an offended sense of honor. 0.57

00:32:14.380 And I think, like, Benedict Arnold was sort of the same way, except it's, you know, he went from

00:32:18.620 American to, to British. Like, the reason why Benedict, Benedict Arnold did that, because he

00:32:23.700 wasn't getting the honor that he thought was due to him in the American military. And there was that

00:32:28.840 moment, he just decided, okay, I'm done with this, I'm going somewhere else. I think that was really,

00:32:33.380 really interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think for Washington, it is, it is a little personal. I mean,

00:32:37.820 it's personal at this point in time, but, you know, as he is, watches the road to the revolution

00:32:43.340 unfold, what Washington does that Arnold doesn't do later on, is that Washington takes his personal

00:32:50.600 experience with Loudoun and the kind of the, the individual dream being crushed, and he applies

00:32:56.140 that to the larger American colonial situation of, they will never be treated as full-fledged British

00:33:04.600 subjects. They're never going to have the representation in Parliament, because they're

00:33:08.520 not recognized as equal players, in that they are subject colonists. And so, you know, Washington

00:33:15.640 kind of takes that experience that he had, and it, he transcends it into, onto a more philosophical

00:33:21.800 level. But he has to be removed from that a few years. He's got to, like, let his temper cool down a

00:33:27.060 little bit. And so he could be more reflective. And that's where he becomes this, you know, very

00:33:33.000 committed revolutionary from the, from the earliest of the colonial resistance movement.

00:33:38.800 So when Washington was made general of the Continental Army, how did his reading change? Did,

00:33:45.240 because like before he was reading all these British manuals on how to be a British officer,

00:33:48.600 but this was a different kind of war. And I think if I remember correctly, I've read things

00:33:53.060 at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Washington tried to fight it like a British army would,

00:33:57.580 but he's getting his, he's getting trounced because the British army was just huge, right? And, uh,

00:34:03.380 yeah. So did any of his reading, um, change his tactics or his battlefield command?

00:34:11.080 Sure. I mean, you know, first of all, you know, you can see looking at his expense accounts and his

00:34:16.700 letters that were written as he's a delegate in Congress before he's appointed commander,

00:34:21.940 uh, he sees what's coming. And, you know, I mean, people are talking about, Hey, we have this,

00:34:27.220 where we're going to form this army, who's going to lead it. And he's, you know, the only guy there

00:34:31.860 that's attending the Congress in uniform, uh, kind of advertising his experience and his availability.

00:34:38.440 And what he does is he goes to, uh, to a lot of the Philadelphia bookstores and he gets a couple of,

00:34:44.920 um, of people to act as his book buying agents, both in New York and in Philadelphia. And he's asking

00:34:51.740 them to buy everything military that they can find, whether it was a manual about how to use a,

00:34:58.640 you know, an artillery piece in the field to, uh, you know, how to, um, to organize squads and

00:35:04.760 platoons, anything that was on a military subject, he was asking them to buy. And he also asked them

00:35:11.780 to buy something that was published every year in the British army, which was their order of merit list.

00:35:16.820 He wanted to know if he was to be the American commander, who he was going to be up against,

00:35:22.680 because he knew a lot of these guys from the, uh, the French and Indian war. And so he was,

00:35:27.720 he was doing his background research, but the thing to note is that all of Washington's reading

00:35:33.000 is really stuff that in a more modern army, we would assign, uh, sergeants and lieutenants to read.

00:35:40.820 He's not reading anything that's kind of grand strategy. There's nothing that's at,

00:35:44.980 uh, kind of a senior commander general officer level one, because he doesn't really have time

00:35:51.080 for that. You know, he's got to figure out how to take a army of volunteers. I mean, some of these

00:35:56.720 men and boys are turning up off their farms with their, you know, uh, hunting pieces and pitchforks

00:36:03.780 to fight. They don't know anything about being in the military. You know, Washington doesn't need

00:36:08.220 grand strategy. He needs to learn how to organize a professional army. And he had a little bit of

00:36:13.040 experience in that within the Virginia regiment, but not enough, not on, uh, to be on the scale

00:36:18.260 that he needed to be. So that's his, his first very practical problem is how to take citizens

00:36:23.280 and make them soldiers. But also is the, the, the other important thing to remember is that almost

00:36:29.680 all the books he's reading are British. He wants to organize the continental army along the same lines

00:36:36.960 as the British army, even though he knows in the back of his mind that he really can't hope that

00:36:43.980 this group of, you know, farmers and, you know, frontier frontiersmen and sailors were going to be

00:36:51.200 able to, you know, beat the British and their Hessian allies on a traditional battlefield. But the reason

00:36:57.900 why he wants so desperately to make the army look like the British one is that for Washington very

00:37:04.880 early, as I said, as I said, this is, this war is about independence. And so it's not just a

00:37:11.520 rebellion that gets put down. There had been lots of rebellions in British history and always the

00:37:17.160 rebellion gets crushed. The leaders get beheaded or hung or some or some other kind of savage execution

00:37:22.960 and, uh, and the system is repressive. But for Washington to establish an independent country,

00:37:29.680 he has to be seen as a commander of an army that's professional. He does not want to be seen as the

00:37:38.420 leader of a group of rebels because rebels are criminals. And, you know, Washington thoroughly

00:37:43.860 believes in the righteousness of the American cause. He believes that, uh, that he's playing his,

00:37:50.500 that his, he's playing his role, but his role is to make an organization that is professional.

00:37:55.980 And it's something that the British would recognize as being a worthy adversary. So he's obsessed with

00:38:02.920 rank, with, um, uniforms, with organization, um, to make everything run like clockwork. And he does

00:38:12.380 things that really in today's army, you would have a Sergeant or a Lieutenant doing. He's living,

00:38:17.800 he's giving orders about, uh, where to dig latrines and how many times a soldier is required to bathe,

00:38:24.420 uh, at the same time as he's trying to, you know, draw up plans to, you know, beat the British on a

00:38:29.400 big battlefield. Uh, he's trying to do this all with nothing but a few field manuals to help him.

00:38:36.360 And so I imagine his strategic thinking, his big, big higher level thinking that was based more

00:38:41.740 probably on experience as opposed to reading.

00:38:45.240 Yeah. I mean, it is based on experience. He knows how the British are approaching things. Um,

00:38:50.620 cause he'd spent years of being around them. Uh, he knows that British officers like to win big

00:38:56.880 battles. That's how wars were won. You would, you know, go onto an open field and you would,

00:39:01.880 you know, slug it out with your, with your enemy and whoever's standing at the end of the day,

00:39:06.240 uh, that's who won. And, uh, and that's how you win a war. And, uh, so Washington very much tries to do

00:39:14.480 it, but he, neither he nor his army know how to fight a battle on that kind of scale. And this is

00:39:22.020 where his, his self-taught education kind of lets him down. And so he, he realizes though, learning

00:39:28.360 from past mistakes that, uh, as he's watching this group of disparate farmers get better, they're never

00:39:37.540 going to be on that level with, with the British. So he adapts his strategic thinking

00:39:42.380 to realize that you don't have to win the big battles to win the war. Because what Washington

00:39:48.060 had, the Americans had was the home field advantage. This is incredibly expensive for the

00:39:53.900 British to fight. Uh, they had coming out of the seven years war that, or the French and Indian war,

00:39:59.060 the, uh, the British national debt in today's money would really dwarf ours, uh, to give you a sense

00:40:06.760 of scale. So they were under a staggering amount of debt from the last war. And now,

00:40:12.380 they are deploying at the, what was at the time, the largest expeditionary force the world had ever

00:40:18.360 seen. The entire Royal Navy is mobilized for this pretty much, um, you know, huge regiments of, of,

00:40:25.880 and armies from, from Britain are sent as well as, uh, the British ministry hires these German soldiers,

00:40:34.240 these Hessians, uh, that they were paying basically per head to, uh, to send over to America. This is 0.71

00:40:40.700 incredibly expensive. And Washington knows that the British taxpayers in England will not stand for

00:40:47.760 this for very long. So he realizes in about 1776, after he has a terrible series of battles in New

00:40:54.520 York and New Jersey, that all he has to do is survive, hit the British where he could small battles 0.97

00:41:02.280 that were something that would kind of build confidence among his own troops. I mean, you got to

00:41:06.960 give your own guys a little bit of a win here and there, uh, or you got to give these guys a reason

00:41:12.120 to reenlist, but you don't want to bite off more than they can chew. So you think about when he

00:41:17.500 crossed the Delaware and the kind of the famous, uh, you know, Christmas of 1776 and the beginning of

00:41:23.520 1777 with the battles of Trenton and Princeton, those were perfect battles for the Americans to fight.

00:41:29.480 They were small scale. They were taking, uh, the British and the Hessians by surprise. Um, and they 0.97

00:41:36.040 were taking advantage of the terrain and kind of the local knowledge that these, uh, that these men

00:41:41.240 brought to the fight that the, uh, that the British and the Hessians just didn't have. So from the

00:41:45.620 American standpoint, you know, these guys are pumped up, more soldiers come to enlist and the belief in

00:41:51.820 the fact that this is winnable, uh, is reinstilled among the American people. Uh, but from the British 0.96

00:41:58.220 standpoint, they can never pin Washington down. He's always a day ahead of them, a day's march

00:42:05.060 away from them. They're never able to close it. And he basically ends up forcing them to chase him

00:42:11.640 around mostly in the mid Atlantic region, but then later in the South, uh, they run them ragged to the

00:42:18.980 point where they're like, okay, enough. We can't do this anymore. We're going to have to just end this

00:42:23.520 and, and give the Americans their independence. Wow. So he wins the war and then now he, everyone's

00:42:29.740 calling for him to be the first president and Washington knew this, like that this was kind

00:42:34.360 of the talk. He was elected president. And as you talk about in the book with, I think he did a

00:42:38.440 really great job was describing how, again, self-conscious Washington was about this. He knew

00:42:44.560 he was the first president and by being the first president, he was going to set the precedent

00:42:49.660 for all subsequent presidents. So with that in mind, did his reading, his personal reading change

00:42:56.460 with this new position as, uh, the executive of the United States? Yeah, I mean, it did. I mean,

00:43:02.500 Washington, because he's trying to shape this new Republican government, um, he doesn't really have

00:43:09.760 the time similar to when the, the American revolution was breaking out and he didn't have time to read this

00:43:15.020 grand strategy stuff that his British counterparts were, had read already. Um, Washington doesn't

00:43:20.340 have time to really sit and read the enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Rousseau and, uh, and

00:43:26.980 kind of think about and ponder the future. He's got to get a government functioning. Uh, there's nothing,

00:43:33.940 if you read the constitution, there's nothing that requires the president to have a cabinet. Um, that's

00:43:38.720 something that he had brought over from his experience in the, in the revolution of kind of having a,

00:43:42.880 a staff of smart people around you. And he would let them debate and argue, and that would inform

00:43:48.620 his decision-making. Um, you know, he's doing those practical things, but from, uh, a reading

00:43:54.300 standpoint, what Washington sorely needed was an understanding of how his actions and how the

00:44:01.940 actions of his administration were going down with the public. I mean, this is an era long before

00:44:07.760 opinion polling. Um, he needed some sort of gauge as to public reaction. Um, because when people are

00:44:16.420 around Washington, they're always going to be polite. They're always going to, you know, applaud

00:44:20.100 when he comes into the room and, you know, stand and be respectful. But, uh, what are they saying when

00:44:25.360 he's out of earshot? What are they saying in other States? And so, you know, first he starts paying

00:44:30.420 attention to newspapers, um, and, you know, kind of the mass media of the day. Uh, but over time,

00:44:36.280 the newspapers all became increasingly partisan, uh, and some of them became harshly critical of

00:44:41.600 him. And, uh, and so, I mean, I don't think he would ever use the term fake news, but, um,

00:44:47.980 they, the, for the first time he's really being heavily criticized. So he didn't really enjoy that

00:44:52.860 kind of reading and it wasn't objective for him. So what he turned to, uh, was these, uh, printed

00:44:58.900 sermons that were out there. He was basically making the assumption that, um, every pulpit in America,

00:45:06.200 was politicized in some way, going back to the revolution, uh, every minister, regardless of

00:45:12.660 congregation had pretty much taken aside and, and Washington was making the assumption that these

00:45:19.160 ministers who published their sermons were basically reflecting the views of their congregation.

00:45:25.720 They were the voice of their community. And a lot of these sermons, if you go and read the ones

00:45:31.540 that are in Washington's collection are talking about the policies, uh, that are, that his

00:45:37.380 administration is taking a stand on some of the, uh, the laws that the first Congresses are passing,

00:45:43.020 um, and some of the more controversial aspects of, uh, of Washington's administration, like the,

00:45:49.220 the whiskey tax, uh, that leads to a rebellion out in Pennsylvania. There are sermons that are written

00:45:54.800 about this either for, or against the way that Washington's administration is handling these

00:46:00.160 different crises. And, uh, and he uses those as kind of a, a way to, to gauge what people outside of

00:46:07.580 the colonial, or the, the new U.S. Capitol were thinking about what was going on in this new country.

00:46:15.460 And, uh, and it was a lot less, um, a lot less bitter, uh, tone in these sermons than, um, than in

00:46:25.740 the, than in the newspapers. So he paid very keen attention to those. And you could see, if you look

00:46:31.520 at his collections and what he has, uh, saved at Mount Vernon, um, he has a lot that are favorable to

00:46:37.740 his administration's policies, but there are some in the, in his collection that are very critical,

00:46:42.400 but they're critical in a way that's respectful. And so, you know, I assumed when I was reading them

00:46:48.280 that if he took the, the time and energy to, uh, to save those, that he took that criticism seriously,

00:46:54.640 but not, not personally. Um, and he was using it as a way to kind of temper his next move, uh, so to

00:47:02.680 speak. Uh, so it is, it's interesting to see how he, uh, kind of shifted away from reading the how-to

00:47:09.260 books of the, you know, like the military manuals and the, the, uh, the political philosophy books,

00:47:15.480 uh, towards a much more practical approach to understanding the American people.

00:47:21.300 So let's shift gears to his, his personal library, his study at Mount Vernon. So, uh, you know, your

00:47:26.000 books at that time, that was sort of like, it's a status marker. Like you kept books there, books

00:47:29.880 were expensive. So you only, you only had books or pamphlets that were important to you. I'm curious

00:47:34.160 about this George Washington. I know we've all bought books before just cause it makes us feel

00:47:39.200 smart. We don't actually read it. Like I've got, I've got a copy of Infinite Jest in my bookshelf.

00:47:44.500 I've read like three pages of it, but I have it. I'm curious. Did Washington do that? Like,

00:47:49.100 even though he didn't read like the Lightman philosophers, did he have those in his,

00:47:53.140 his personal library? Yeah, he did have a lot of stuff in his library that is pretty easy to figure

00:47:58.960 out that he didn't read and not because he wanted to collect it, but because people started as he

00:48:04.180 became famous both during the revolution and, uh, and then the, uh, the, the confederation period,

00:48:09.360 and then his presidency and beyond, uh, Washington was like the celebrity of the day. So people trying

00:48:15.100 to curry favor with him would send him books as gifts. Some were presented to him in these

00:48:20.560 diplomatic ceremonies. Um, and, uh, and so you could tell he didn't read them. A lot of them were not

00:48:26.640 in English, so easy to discard that. Um, but he didn't really kind of know what to do. Like if it was

00:48:32.140 something was given to him as a gift and was inscribed to him, uh, it was kind of, I think he felt bad

00:48:37.600 about just getting rid of it and he couldn't re-gift it, you know, to somebody else. Um, so, uh, so there

00:48:43.880 are, there are some of those things in his library, but, um, but the thing to note about his collection

00:48:50.720 and what he used, yes, books are definitely a luxury item in the 18th century. Very few of

00:48:56.460 them are actually produced in, in the colonies or the new states. Most of them are imported from

00:49:01.460 Europe, uh, and then they're handed down from generation to generation because they are so 0.62

00:49:05.500 expensive. Um, but Washington, unlike Jefferson, who would show off his library to visitors to

00:49:12.920 Monticello, Washington never let people into his library at Mount Vernon. Um, his step-grandson,

00:49:19.760 George Washington Park Custis, who was raised by the Washingtons at Mount Vernon, uh, said that that

00:49:25.740 room was one which no one entered without permission. Um, he would never, if, if he had,

00:49:31.940 you know, guests staying all the time, some people he knew, some people that were just strangers

00:49:36.240 stopping in. If you were a guest at Mount Vernon, no matter how well you knew the Washingtons, you would 0.97

00:49:41.900 be provided reading material. You would not be allowed to go and peruse his shelves and, and select

00:49:48.200 something that appealed to you. He would put out, or have his, uh, his house slaves put out, um,

00:49:54.040 newspapers or maybe a couple books here and there. Um, but yeah, he didn't really have, like, yards of

00:50:00.260 unread classics on his shelves just so he could look smart. Um, I would venture a guess that most of

00:50:07.380 those gift books that he received that I could tell he never read probably just got boxed up and,

00:50:12.260 you know, put in storage somewhere. And he kept the books at hand that he was actually going to use,

00:50:16.900 uh, that were more, um, you know, practical for him. Um, so yeah, he, uh, he was not one to show

00:50:23.520 off because he was so thin skinned. He did not want to get trapped into some conversation about,

00:50:29.740 you know, whatever, whether it be literature, philosophy, politics that he did not feel prepared

00:50:34.720 for. So letting people into his library and what if they picked something off the shelf that he hadn't

00:50:40.580 read and wanted to discuss it with him, then he's got to get out of the conversation. Um, you know,

00:50:46.100 again, it goes back to what I had said at the beginning of our, of our conversation here.

00:50:50.080 He wanted people to see what he wanted of him. Uh, not, he did not want people to form their own

00:50:58.100 judgments. So, uh, the library was kind of his inner sanctum. And I think it was a place too,

00:51:03.480 for him to organize himself, um, for him to do his work, uh, to run his farms and run his

00:51:11.760 administration and everything. Um, he didn't want people disturbing this place. That was his

00:51:18.220 man cave, his 18th century man cave. He did not like people coming into it. So it was definitely,

00:51:24.320 you know, his and his alone. So I'm curious after researching and writing about him doing this

00:51:30.260 dissertation on his reading habits, I'm curious, did you walk away with anything that you've tried

00:51:35.360 to emulate about Washington and his self-education? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I've always been

00:51:41.420 a reader, uh, myself and, you know, when you're going to, uh, going to West Point, you, you learn

00:51:46.500 there by what's called the Thayer method where you, uh, you know, read the lesson the night before and

00:51:51.660 you, you know, you do the homework problems or questions or whatever, and then you go into class

00:51:55.920 the next day, prepare to take a quiz on it. Uh, so, you know, kind of that, that's, you,

00:52:01.100 you have an element of self-teaching in, uh, in that type of education, um, that's kind of been

00:52:06.860 with me. And, uh, I, I've always admired, um, how Washington really strived to learn from this,

00:52:15.660 from his experiences and from the things he was actually reading. I mean, you know, he read for

00:52:21.440 self-improvement and I think that's something that, you know, I've tried to do, uh, for myself. And I

00:52:26.680 think it's something that, uh, that a lot of people who do that benefit from. Nobody's ever

00:52:30.980 dumber by reading something. Um, you know, you get through a lot by, uh, by Googling things now,

00:52:37.040 but, uh, but learn, you know, looking up, finding your own solution, uh, figuring out how to do

00:52:42.420 something on your own is, is a very rewarding, very rewarding way to, to get through things in life.

00:52:48.700 Well, Adrian, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time. It's been an

00:52:51.600 absolute pleasure. Thanks. I was, uh, thanks for having me. I had a lot of fun.

00:52:55.040 My guest today was Dr. Adrian Harrison. Her book is A Powerful Mind,

00:52:57.620 The Self-Education of George Washington. It's available on amazon.com.

00:53:00.660 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash powerful mind, where you can find links to

00:53:04.560 resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:53:18.660 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:53:22.820 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the

00:53:26.420 podcast, I've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us

00:53:29.480 a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you.

00:53:32.720 Please share the show with your friends. The more the merrier around here. Word of mouth is how

00:53:36.280 the show grows. We're taking a break for the Christmas break. We hope you have a good one.

00:53:40.880 We'll see you in 2018. Thanks for a great year. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:53:46.060 manly.

00:53:46.800 Manly.

The Art of Manliness - December 21, 2017

#366： Teach Yourself Like George Washington

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