evidence: Indeed, a significant strength of this volume is its nuanced attention to Washington’s lifelong absorption of British Enlightenment "improving" ideas. These came through his readings in enduring agricultural classics, such as Jethro Tull’s "Horse-Hoeing Husbandry" (1731), a book that stressed the advantages to be gained for soils by plowing fields. Thomas Hale’s four-volume "A Compleat Body of Husbandry" (1758-59) was another of Washington’s favorites. Ideas also came via personal correspondence with "improving" authors. Foremost here were the English agriculturalist Arthur Young and Scottish Enlightenment figures, such as Sir John Sinclair and James "Bee" Anderson of Edinburgh. Washington learned from all of them and encouraged others to do so as well. The president even recommended Anderson — whose periodical, the Bee, Washington promoted in the Gazette of the United States — for membership in the American Philosophical Society. Neither did Washington overlook contemporary American agricultural innovators. Some of that set and their activities remain well-known — Thomas Jefferson and his experiments at Monticello, for instance. Others, renowned in the 18th century, are now largely forgotten, among them members of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture such as John Beale Bordley, Richard Peters and Samuel Powel. Their society, founded in 1785, named Washington an honorary member. He fit in.