Biography authors' depictions of George Washington have examined of the life of America’s iconic first president over the years, shifting to a look at everything from the multiple deadly diseases that plagued him to his enormous wealth.
The first president still remains in the view of historians — and perhaps the collective view of the nation he founded — as one of America’s most revered personalities.
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“Upon the Ruins of Liberty” by Roger C. Aden, published in 2002, discusses the “revelation of ugly history” and the ensuing eight-year controversy “about the role of slavery in America's commemorative landscape.” Sociologist and author
Elijah Anderson called it an eye-opening and provocative book that “will cause us to reconsider the history we’ve all been taught.”
In his 2003 book “His Excellency: George Washington,” Joseph J. Ellis talks about the struggle between placing Washington on a pedestal and separating the myths from the man. “Washington's iconic status atop ‘the American version of Mount Olympus,’ combined with his aloof personality, poses a distinct problem for the biographer,”
a reviewer wrote in The New York Times.
Media and pop culture have also depicted Washington’s personal life in unflattering ways in recent years. One example was a
PBS report titled "The 9 Deadly Diseases that Plagued George Washington."
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"He was really quite ill, even when he was president,” said Dr. Howard Markel, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine, in the report. One of those deadly diseases, tuberculosis, may have caused him to become infertile, researchers believe.
Dr. John K. Amory with University of Washington School of Medicine wrote an article about that theory in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
“Despite great successes in his military and civilian life and his central role in the creation of the world’s most enduring democratic nation, George Washington likely suffered from male infertility and harbored great personal sadness about his inability to father an heir,” Amory wrote.
But perhaps the least positive portrayal of Washington yet was in Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed 3” video game. The company offered downloadable content for the game called “The Tyranny of George Washington” that showed the president surrendering to evil.
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