Author Peter Hannaford, known as a chronicler of the 40th President, Ronald Reagan, found his own interest in George Washington reawakened when he served for six years on the Mount Vernon Advisory Committee. In The Essential George Washington, he collects observations on the nation's first president from Washington contemporaries like John Adams and Thomas Paine, to notables who followed including Abraham Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, to modern-day figures including Bob Dole, David McCullough, and Ronald Reagan.