Image courtesy of Mount Vernon
Author Peter Stark
Best-selling author/historian Peter Stark will visit Mount Vernon Thursday, Oct. 25 to discuss his latest book Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father, recently published by Ecco/HarperCollins. The free author talk will take place at 7 p.m. in the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Auditorium at Mount Vernon.
The Wall Street Journal calls the book "supremely entertaining: The pacing superb, the description of conflict and wilderness travails rousing."
Stark writes of a Washington, 21, leading his first British expedition into the Ohio Valley wilderness: "This young Washington is ambitious, temperamental, vain, think-skinned, petulant, awkward, demanding, stubborn, annoying, hasty, passionate. This Washington has not yet learned to cultivate his image or contain his emotions. Here, instead, is a raw young man struggling toward maturity and in love with a close friend's wife. This is the Washington of emotional neediness, personal ambition, and mistakes — many mistakes."
Stark's research shows how much Washington grew as a leader throughout adulthood.
In Young Washington, Stark takes the reader into Washington’s head and helps understand what drove Washington: How he fumbled into and found his way out of multiple crises and how these experiences helped forge the wise, empathetic leader he became.
Stark, a historian and seasoned adventure writer, paddled, hiked, and climbed the region where young Washington’s story played out.
Peter Stark is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Astoria, along with The Last Empty Places, Last Breath and At the Mercy of the River. He is a frequent contributor to Outside Magazine, has written for Smithsonian and the New Yorker and has been nominated for a National Magazine Award.
Register for this free event here. Guests should park in the Mount Vernon visitor lots and enter the auditorium via the Shops at Mount Vernon.
