Are you sure what you know about America's first President - George Washington is right? One of the founders fought tirelessly to guarantee these God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You're not alone. Millions of Americans want a deeper understanding of their first powerful and talented president. Wouldn't you rather learn them for yourself? This book is the best choice for you. It will provide a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation - George Washington. The book will take us through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president. Washington received his initial military training and command with the Virginia Regiment. He is the impetuous young officer whose miraculous survival in combat half-convinced him that he could not be killed. Here is the free-spending landowner whose debts to English merchants instilled him with a prickly resentment of imperial power. We see the general who lost more battles than he won and the reluctant president who tried to float above the partisan feuding of his cabinet. His Excellency is a magnificent work, indispensable to an understanding not only of its subject but also of the nation he brought into being. Washington became an international symbol for liberation and nationalism, as the leader of the first successful revolution against a colonial empire.