A snappy book about a river and horseback trip more than two centuries ago? Hard to pull off, but Achenbach (Captured by Aliens
, etc.) has done so with enough authority to satisfy historians and in a lively style sure to please general readers. His tale is about George Washington's fixation with the West—not today's Far West but the lands inland of the Appalachians—and about what that single-minded interest came to mean for the nation. One wouldn't think that chapters devoted to a single horseback trip that Washington, the nation's first great westerner, took inland in 1784 could be of much interest. But the author uses that trip to unroll a large canvas of subjects, chief among them how a single man's "personal issues had a way of becoming national ones." Fleshing out a day-to-day itinerary with lively excursions into the land's geography, politics, farmers and backwoodsmen, Indians and slaves, Achenbach also unwraps Washington's personality, at once magisterial and rough, obsessive yet realistic, accepting of the people but disdainful of those who got in his way. The Potomac, whose successful development as grand route to the interior would greatly benefit Washington, also plays a central role. Achenbach explains how the river's intractable geography kept the nation's capital from becoming the great metropolis of Washington's dreams. Toward the end, the book wanders off into the Civil War and such subjects as today's Potomac and its landscape. Achenbach ought to have stuck close to his opening intent. The story of Washington's fixity on a dream impossible to realize is a good enough tale on its own. 6 maps. Agent, Michael Congdon.
(June)
