Book Summary: George Washington's World

George Washington’s World                                                    3-29-13

By Genevieve Foster

 

p. 91-92, 111-165, 168-172

This reading told about a lot of interesting things happening around the world at about the same time.  I read about Phillis Wheatley, a black slave girl who wrote lots of poetry.  I read about Captain Cook.  He discovered Hawaii.  There was a Scotsman named James Watt who invented the steam engine, and two men named Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier who discovered oxygen and named it.  I read that King George III was sure that he knew the right way to do everything, and he did not want any advice.  He dismissed and appointed lots of Prime Ministers until he found one who would do whatever he wanted.  England was taxing the colonies, and they were getting where they couldn’t stand it any more.  I read about Frederick of Prussia.  After the Seven Years War was over, he set about rebuilding Prussia.  He did exactly as he pleased, and did not care what anyone said about him.  One funny thing that I read was that one time he was riding through the street, and he saw a cartoon that someone drew of him as a tax collector, grinding coffee, picking up every single bean to make sure he did not lose any.  He simply looked at it, and then said to his secretary, “Hang that thing lower down on the wall so people can see it better,” and then he rode away.  Louis XV was spending so much money for jewels for women that he liked, while the people of France were starving.  He knew that France wouldn’t last long this way, but if he was not affected by it, he did not care.  I also read about a little Austrian princess named Marie Antoinette.  She got married to Louis XVI of France.  I don’t think he was interested in being king.  All he wanted to do was to make locks and go hunting.  I read about a little boy named Maria Joseph Paul Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.  Lafayette did not want to just be a silly courtier, and he went on to fight for the cause of the American Revolution.  I also read about the birth of Napoleon Buonaparte.  I read about a Spanish artist named Goya.  I also read about the corsairs of Algiers, the Turkish Empire, Poland being pulled apart, fighting between Russia and the Turks, how Japan shut itself out from the world, Alexander Hamilton, John Paul Jones, Olaudah Equiano, a Spanish friar named Junipero Serra, and rebellion in Massachusetts.  I would like to tell about all theses too, but I am simply out of time!