Reader recommendation: Mr. President

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

January 20, 2014

Harlow Giles Unger's Mr. President: George Washington and the Making of the Nation's Highest Office tells how Washington established the executive branch of the United States government. I also loved Unger's "Lafayette," his biography of the marquis de Lafayette years ago. Unger tells how Martha and George took care of George-Washington Lafayette, Lafayette's son and Washington's godson, in New York and Mount Vernon during the French Revolution.