Marks . . . has delivered a book of compassion, courage, and meticulous detail.Progressive Magazine Marks paints a nuanced, three-dimensional picture of George Washington. He helps us understand him as both revolutionary and enslaver, as president and as captor, as a man who was troubled by the institution even as he continued to participate in it. Thy Will Be Done is an exceptional book. This is how George Washington should be taught. This is how history should be done.Clint Smith, New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America John Garrison Marks has written an unsparing audit of our inherited memoryproving that the real revolution is in who gets to tell the story. He reveals how the nations first act of self-deception became its longest-running tradition.Alexis Coe, American history columnist at the New York Times and New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington Impressive in chronological scope, range of sources, and methodology. Few historians work as skillfully as John GarrisonMarks does in his sensitive, primarily archival reconstruction of the early history of the people freed through Washingtons will and the primarily oral history of contemporary interpretation of enslavement at Mount Vernon.Andrew M. Schocket, author of Fighting over the Founders: How We Remember the American Revolution An engaging and nuanced chronicle of the legacy of George Washington and slavery over the past 250 years. Given increasingly polarized debates about how to interpret our countrys history, Thy Will Be Done is a vital contribution to understanding our national history and memory.Cassandra A. Good, author of First Family: George Washingtons Heirs and the Making of America
