On Wednesday, Americans throughout the country will be celebrating the birth of our nation with fireworks, American flags, cookouts, and all of the other Fourth of July ephemera.

Harvard Business School Historian Nancy Koehn joined Boston Public Radio Tuesday to talk about the first president of the United States, George Washington, the leadership skills he exemplified, and how civility shaped the man that shaped our nation.

Koehn said that without Washington, “the country would not survive.”

“The consciousness of what he was doing at the beginning of a new country is really impressive,” she continued.