Book Club: Author Alexis Coe On George Washington

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4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve all heard the mythology around George Washington: He never told a lie! He had wooden teeth! There was a cherry tree that one time!

But in her new biography, You Never Forget Your First, historian Alexis Coe revisits the origins of those myths and explores aspects of George Washington that may have been brushed over or misconstrued.

Coe talked with Nerdette host Greta Johnsen about what surprised her most about our first president, the unfair portrayals of Washington’s mother, and why it’s important for women to write presidential histories.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WB EZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen wherever you get your podcast.
0:37.4	From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is the Nerdat Book Club. It's just like a normal
0:38.8	book club, except sometimes the author shows up to. So with Nerdat Book Club, you know, we pick a book
0:45.0	a month and we talk about it with a rotating panel. Our April book is Alexis Coes. You never
0:50.4	forget your first. And you can hear the panel discussion next Friday. But today's
0:55.3	guest is Alexis herself. She's a historian. She was a researcher at the New York Public Library,
1:00.9	and she worked with Doris Kearns Goodwin on a new history channel series all about George
1:05.6	Washington. And she is also the author of this new biography of George Washington, which is why we are talking to her today.
1:14.9	Alexis, hey.
1:16.1	Hi, thanks for having me.
1:18.1	We are so excited to have you.
1:19.6	So I want to start with just the title of this book because I think it is hilarious and amazing.
1:24.3	Why did you decide to name a biography of our first president? You never forget your
1:29.8	first. You know, I didn't really make the decision. I just made one of many bad jokes that stock.
1:38.0	Yeah, I have a tough agent, which is a good thing. It saves me from my bad ideas. And he's, you know,
1:46.9	you have to really sell him on something. And I knew when I proposed a new George Washington
1:52.7	biography that would join a pretty crowded shell, I had to sell him from the very beginning.
	...

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