Alexis Coe on You Never Forget Your First

Alexis Coe is a historian, TV commentator, curator, and columnist whose work examines how power, myth, and repetition shape the way American history gets told. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book You Never Forget Your First, a sharp, funny, and rigorously researched biography of George Washington that challenges centuries of received wisdom about America’s first president.

In this episode, Coe talks to Matthew about how she discovered that no woman had written a full biography of Washington in more than forty years, why so many presidential histories have hardened into myth, and what happens when size and seriousness are mistaken for authority. She walks through her research process, her decision to focus on Washington off the battlefield, and the risks and rewards of writing history that refuses to sound reverent just because it’s old. “It tells me to trust myself creatively in the same way that I trust myself intellectually,” Coe says. “And that’s such a lovely feeling.”"

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