Or is the problem we revere “great people” and refuse to see their failures? A biography that holds their subject on a pedestal is not a very interesting one after all.
Ulysses Grant was a fantastic general that kept the US together during the civil war. He did commendable and not so commendable things as president. Grant was a born sucker if ever there was one. He constantly fell for every scheme in the book. He was unambiguous to a fault, and had a hard time promoting himself. He just by happenstance, and out of desperation, fell into the one thing he was much better at than anyone else. Otherwise we would have never have heard of him.
Washington did dedicate a lot of his time, energy, and wealth as general and president to the US. He had a kind of reserved outward lack of ambition that let him balance the egos around him. But, despite acknowledging slavery was contradictory to the revolution, he could never commit to freeing his slaves or finding a path to emancipation that robbed him and his wife use of their enslaved labor during their lives. They even pursued runaways like Ona Judge with some zeal and tried to lie to themselves that enslaved people enjoyed being part of their “family”.
These biographies are interesting because of the contrast in the failures of their lives with the successes.