It was fairly interesting, if not always very deep. Philbrick couldn't go a page without mentioning slavery—which I guess isn't surprising in a book written about the meaning of America in 2020 when racial unrest was rampant. I found it discouraging. Yes, Washington owned slaves, and that was wrong. But it's easy to judge the past by today's standards and difficult to understand it. There isn't a country in the world that doesn't have a history of injustice because all of them are full of humans. Yes, slavery existed and yes it was bad. But all reasonable people have already acknowledged that. It accomplishes nothing to beat ourselves over the head with it. If Washington had fought to outlaw slavery, the nation wouldn't have survived and a much stronger slave-holding southern country would have been created. Whenever slavery in the U.S.'s history is mentioned, it should be followed up by two statements. 1) It was the Democrats who insisted on it, fought for it, and continued it by other means after the Civil War, and 2) It's gone now. Let's move on.