Alexis Coe, trained as a historian, and employed at various times by the Brooklyn Historical Society and as a research curator for the New York Public Library, levels her witty, iconoclastic book not only at George Washington but also at those legions of male biographers...

With so many biographies of George Washington available, it is not so much a matter of having something new to say but approaching the subject from a singular perspective: a biography with a thesis. David O. Stewart, the author of well-received biographical studies of Aaron Burr...