George Washington and “The Thigh Men of Dad History”

Presidential historian Alexis Coe, author of the New York Times bestseller “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington,” joins Elizabeth for a special Presidents’ Day edition of Tell Me About Your Father to discuss what we get right and wrong about the legacy of America’s first dad. Alexis is the first female historian to write a biography of Washington in over a century, and her work dares to roll its eyes at the male biographers, or  “Thigh Men of Dad History,” as she calls them, who have preceded her. These Thigh Men have exclusively told Washington’s story in 1,000-page tomes read by dads everywhere, spending hundreds of pages focused on Washington's masculinity, rhapsodizing over his bulging quadriceps and his battlefield accomplishments. Coe, however, brings Washington into fuller focus as a fatherless boy left to fend for his family at 10, a devoted "helicopter" stepfather, and a charismatic leader who was reluctant to be president. Listen as Coe tells us about Washington's early life and marriage, the “trial and error” approach he brought to the office, and the lingering untruth that he freed his slaves upon his death, a fact historians at Mount Vernon wringing their hands over. today