Commander in Chief - by Brady J Crytzer (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

For readers of Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life and Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming, award-winning historian Brady J. Crytzer delivers a fast-paced account of George Washington as never seen before: an embattled, untested president confronting five crises that threatened the young United States as he forged the powers of the commander in chief and secured the nation's future.

The year 1748. Sixteen-year-old surveyor George Washington crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains into a wilderness claimed by Indigenous nations, European empires, and settlers answering to no one. Danger was brewing in the American West. It was only the beginning.

Four decades later, during Washington's presidency, the country was coming apart at its frontier. Settlement. Debt. Occupation. War. Insurrection. In Commander in Chief, award-winning historian Brady J. Crytzer reveals the exasperated Washington readers have never seen, an untested president confronting five interlocking crises that brought his government to the brink.

This struggle forged federal power, secured the West, and pushed America toward continental expansion. The nearly bankrupt nation looked to western land it could neither control nor defend. Britain occupied American forts around the Great Lakes. Spain closed the Mississippi and New Orleans. Settlers defied deeds, borders, and taxes. Indigenous nations defended homelands Britain had signed away without their consent.

Two American armies marched west and were annihilated. The second suffered the deadliest defeat the US Army would ever endure at the hands of Native forces. As panic spread, Washington turned to Revolutionary War hero "Mad Anthony" Wayne to build a professional national army. Meanwhile, western Pennsylvania rebels rose against the whiskey tax and dared the government to stop them.

By 1794, Washington faced frontier war, domestic insurrection, and foreign powers waiting for an American collapse. Crytzer makes the provocative case that America's first potential civil war was not North versus South, but sectional rupture of East versus West that would decide whether the United States survived.

Review Quotes

For The National Road

"Mr. Crytzer's narrative hums along with the National Road's traffic. . . . He vividly captures the culture that sprang up along the road--taverns, trade, folklore, and industry--while paying fitting tribute to commerce as the glue of national unity."
--Wall Street Journal

"America's first great national project. . . . A fine reminder that a revolution first united our nation, but roads kept it united."
--Kirkus Reviews

"The vivid, compelling, and rarely-researched story of our first national highway. Full of captivating detail and astounding twists and turns."
--Tom McMillan, author of The Year That Made America

For The Whiskey Rebellion

"[A] vivid account of what contemporaries called 'the Western Insurrection.' . . . Crytzer grounds his engaging narrative upon intimate knowledge of the landscape where events unfolded."
--Wall Street Journal

"[A] fast-paced narrative . . . [offering] abundant fresh insight into what was arguably the greatest crisis of George Washington's presidency."
--Woody Holton, author of Liberty Is Sweet

About the Author

Brady J. Crytzer is an award-winning historian of the American frontier and the author of The National Road, The Whiskey Rebellion, Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, and Hessians. His work has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Journal of the American Revolution. He hosts Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution and has appeared on INSP's Into the Wild Frontier, Fox Nation's Outlaws and Lawmen and Blood on the Bridge, C-SPAN, and SiriusXM. He teaches history at Robert Morris University and lives in the Pittsburgh area.