Synopsis

As a young man, George Washington admired and copied into a little notebook 110 rules for civil behavior that originated from a Jesuit textbook.
Washington took these rules very much to heart, and that handwritten list remained with him throughout his life, serving as inspiring guidance from his military days at Valley Forge and Yorktown to his two terms as president.Guidance that at first sounds archaic, it is in fact just as relevant as—indeed, possibly more necessary than—it was nearly three hundred years ago. Richard Brookhiser makes clear the pertinence of these rules for modern readers and proposes that now more than ever we will be wise to follow the modest example of such a great man. Witty and insightful, Brookhiser’s commentary offers real-world instruction in the lost art of self-discipline, and his new preface provides a compelling and timely context in which to employ these guidelines today.

Booklist

According to both his contemporaries and his biographers, Washington valued good manners and painstakingly cultivated his own brand of formal courtesy.
These seemingly quaint and archaic instructions, accompanied by the editor’s often humorous commentaries... offer timeless suggestions on how to cope with the complexities of social discourse.... Delightful.

Biography

Richard Brookhiser, senior editor of the National Review and a columnist for the New York Observer, is the author of Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington; Alexander Hamilton, American; and America’s First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918.