First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

Unless we can return a little more to first principles, & act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know . . . what may be the issue of the contest. —George Washington to James Warren, March 31, 1779

Indeed, it was a skill Washington had acquired rather painfully in his two wars. In leading combat operations, slow and steady thinking, followed with energetic execution, often is more effective than a series of hasty moves that tend to exhaust a force and expose it to attack.

Adrienne Harrison,

Washington had a “propensity for rashness.” He had to learn the hard way to op...