There were many reports from George Washington over the course of the Revolutionary war, but for the most part I think they were carefully crafted and frankly not always worthy of the reactions they proposed.

The careful craftsmanship does makes sense, though, because Washington was a diligent collector and reader of books. As an autodidact, he was constantly learning, and he was the teacher. It’s just a huge shame that when Washington died, his book collection was broken up and sold off. In recent years, author Kevin Hayes tracked down a huge portion of those books, largely to see what kind of notes he’d left in the margins, as he was prone to doing.

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