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John Adams (平装)
by David McCullough
| Category:
American history, Founding history of America |
| Market price: ¥ 238.00
MSL price:
¥ 208.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A standard McCullough work - part scholarship, part entertainment, and part American boosterism, John Adams is another fine addition to McCullough's line of Great Man biographies. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 15 items |
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Walter Isaacson (Time) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
A masterwork of storytelling. |
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Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Lucid and compelling... [Written] in a fluent narrative style that combines a novelist's sense of drama with a scholar's meticulous attention to the historical record. |
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Marie Arana (The Washington Post) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
McCullough is one of our most gifted living writers. |
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Gordon S. Wood (The New York Times Book Review) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
By far the best biography of Adams ever written... McCullough's special gift as an artist is his ability to re-create past human beings in all their fullness and all their humanity. In John and Abigail he has found characters worthy of his talent.
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Brad Hooper (Booklist) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
John Adams and George H. W. Bush share a unique place in American history: both were presidents themselves, and both fathered presidents. McCullough's masterpiece of biography--his first book since the equally distinguished Truman (1992)--brings John Adams pere out from the shadow of his predecessor in the presidency, the Founding Father George Washington. Of hardy New England stock and blessed with a happy upbringing, Adams led an adult life that paralleled the American colonies' movement toward independence and the establishment of the American republic, a long but inspiring process in which Adams was heavily involved. Adams' historical reputation is that of a cold, cranky person who couldn't get along with other people; McCullough sees him as blunt and thin-skinned - and consequently not good at taking criticism - but also as a person of great intelligence, compassion, and even warmth. According to McCullough, Adams' drive to succeed influenced nearly every move he made. He was a lawyer by profession, but when rumblings of self-governance began to stir, Adams' inherent love of personal liberty inevitably drew him into an important role in what was to come. Interestingly, McCullough avers that Adams did not view his election to the presidency as the crowning achievement of his career, for he "was inclined to look back upon the long struggle for independence as the proud defining chapter." But Adams' greatest accomplishment as president, so he himself believed, was the peace his administration brought to the land. This is a wonderfully stirring biography; to read it is to feel as if you are witnessing the birth of a country firsthand.
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Stacy Jones (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
According to Armand M. Nicholi, Jr., in The Question of God the Christian command to love your neighbor as you love yourself was interpreted by C.S. Lewis in this way: He asked who understands that your weaknesses are not as great as your strengths. Who knows that your sins are only a small part of who you are? Who forgives your transgressions because he/she knows that the good you create is greater than the bad you cause? You do. You understand the context of your own sins and forgive them. You see the greater good in yourself vs. the errors and mistakes. To love your neighbor as you love yourself is to see another's transgressions as smaller parts of a greater and good whole.
I mention this because David McCullough's John Adams allows the reader to do just this with the second president of the United States, John Adams. His transgressions aren't major, but his character/personality flaws exist; as we get to know him as the reader of this biography, we are quick to forgive... his flaws are part of a greater (good) whole that we love entirely.
I read this book for the second year of my annual project of reading a biography of a president each January. I found this book completely engaging, readable and enjoyable. It read like a novel, with diaglogue from the main characters, suspense over the outcomes of their ventures, investment in their intrigues, hurt feelings over their sensitivities and shared loyalties in their battles.
McCullough recreates their interpersonal relationships from conversations and quotes in letters and transcripts of public discussions, and this technique makes our second president and his friends (such as Thomas Jefferson) and enemies (such as Thomas Jefferson) very real and very personal. McCullough follows the course of Adams' life chronologically, from his involvement in the Continental Congress, to his life abroad during the Revolutionary War and as president. The portraits he paints of the main characters, including Abigail Adams, are so complete and compelling that when Abigail died, I cried real tears; I'd been with her so long, I felt a real loss at her death.
I strongly recommend this biography of John Adams. If you haven't yet read it, I think it stands as a fabulous history of the beginning of our nation because it covers, though secondarily, the personalities of many of the Framers of the Constitution, the early commonality of their goals and the eventual separation of their aims, both interpersonally and politically through the life of one man.
One of the most compelling aspects of this biography, aside from the lifelong love and friendship of John and Abigail Adams, is the friendship, estrangement and friendship again of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The families were close when both lived in Paris, though their cultures were very different; Jefferson was a spendthrift, and the Adams were quintessential Puritans, prudent with their resources and credit, hard workers, and reasonable in their means; Jefferson owned slaves, and the Adams family was strongly against slavery for its inhumanity. Because of party differences, the presidents parted ways, but in the end maintained a friendship in spite of unresolved differences. (In a great, Hollywood-seeming irony, Jefferson and Adams died on the same day, the 50th Fourth of July celebration.)
And this interpersonal forgiveness leads us back to the Nicholi passage on Lewis. This book clearly and personally illustrates the interpersonal chaos and resolution of the men and women who formed our country through the biography of one man. I strongly recommend it.
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Jim Paris (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
It has ever been John Adams's fate to have been passed over by reputations of the other Founding Fathers, men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and even Hamilton. From the earliest days of the Continental Congress, Adams was directly and actively involved. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. With Franklin, he negotiated aid from the French that proved vital to our independence. He negotiated the first loan to the new nation from the Dutch. He negotiated the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution. He participated in the writing of the Constitution. He was the first Vice President, under George Washington. Oh, and he was also the second president of the United States.
And yet, comparatively speaking, he has been shunted aside by history. In France, Franklin bad-mouthed him shamelessly. He was cold-shouldered by the British, who did not appreciate having to deal with their colonies as an independent nation. As Vice President, he was called "His Rotundity" and was slandered by Hamilton on the right (for not wanting to go to war with France) and Jefferson on the left (for being a monarchist, which he wasn't). As President, Adams had his opponent Jefferson as Vice President. The latter actively engaged a yellow journalist named William Cadwallader to fight Adams at every turn, though he himself was later gored by the same individual when he became President in 1800.
When he finally left the presidency, Adams had another 26 years to live. He returned to his loving wife Abigail in Massachusetts and lived out the rest of his days as a gentleman farmer.
What was unique about Adams and his wife was that they were able to express themselves so well and at such length in their correspondence. For much of his life, especially when he was in Europe, Adams lived apart from his wife and family and depended on the mails for communicating with them. Fortunately, most of this correspondence has survived. Later in life, he was reconciled with Jefferson and began an extensive correspondence with him, often writing four letters to Jefferson's one. These letters are precious historical documents.
It was one of the ironies of fate that both Adams and Jefferson died on the very same day in 1826, and that day was the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence: July 4, 1826.
The problem with most biographies is that the biographer becomes so wrapped up in advocating his subject that he loses perspective. To some extent, this is also true of McCullough. It doesn't matter very much, however, because Adams's life and writings are so fascinating; and the book does right an imbalance in the way that Adams has been treated by history. |
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Timothy Graczewski (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
The cover of the paperback edition to David McCullough's latest Pulitzer Prize winning effort features an endorsement calling it "a masterwork of storytelling." Evidently the editors at Simon Schuster didn't realize that many could view that quote as a double entendre.
Few would deny that McCullough is a writer of genius. No matter the subject, he writes history that is compulsively readable and often unforgettable. As a consequence, McCullough has brought serious works of history to a far broader audience than anyone else in modern memory. Who else could write 600+ page biographies of long dead white men that sell and are read like pulp fiction? The danger, as many lesser known (and quite possibly envious) historians have pointed out, is that McCullough tends to fall in love with his subjects and delivers a story, while undoubtedly entertaining and lucidly written, that is far from the accepted view of events. In other words, McCullough ends up "telling tales," as Princeton historian Sean Wilentz suggested in a withering review of "John Adams" shortly after its publication.
Indeed, if modern historians see Adams as no great man, McCullough plainly disagrees. His Adams is a man of enormous consequence to the direction and fate of the American Republic, second only to Washington as the critical man of the Revolution, which is interesting when one considers that Adams never served in the military and was out of the country for the vast majority of the struggle. For McCullough, Adams helped secure his country's freedom on battlefields of a different sort, but no less important than Saratoga or Yorktown. He was the universally recognized "first man" of the Continental Congress; the primary leader of the push for independence in 1776 (McCullough titles one chapter "Colossus of Independence"); the industrious diplomat that made sure the work got done and the books balanced in Paris (which led to the collapse of his friendship with Ben Franklin) and a loan secured from the Dutch at a critical time late in the war. If he was a failure as president, McCullough argues, it is only because he avoided the warmongering of his fellow Federalists during the Quasi-War with the French and equally rejected the Jeffersonian Republican view that the French Revolution was a beautiful thing, despite its excesses. Moreover, Adams refrained from the political mudslinging and skullduggery that his adversaries - Hamilton on the Right and Jefferson on the Left - actively engaged in or tacitly, but thoroughly supported and encouraged. McCullough's Adams, therefore, is more than just a great man; he's a noble man, too.
In order to make his case, it seems, Thomas Jefferson needs to get knocked down a few pegs (or more). For all of his reputation for genius, McCullough clearly sees a lesser man in the sage of Monticello. Throughout the narrative Jefferson is cast in a bad light. McCullough misses no opportunity to emphasize and repeat Jefferson's shortcomings: a wastrel with an insatiable appetite for luxury; the consequent debt that he toiled under for a lifetime; disingenuousness with friends and colleagues; and the slaves he kept (and occasionally seduced). Adams, by contrast, was frugal, solvent, honest, faithful and an inveterate hater of slavery. In a personal letter written to Benjamin Rush during his retirement, Adams wrote, "Jefferson has succeeded, and multitudes are made to believe that he is pure benevolence... But you and I know him to be an intriguer." It is doubtful whether Rush - a staunch Republican and life-long friend of Jefferson's - would have concurred, but Adams certainly converted McCullough to that perspective.
Maybe John Adams is nothing but "popular history as passive nostalgic spectacle" as Wilentz ungraciously concludes. But I respect McCullough's right to historical interpretation and believe that he has done Adams some justice, even if it comes largely at the expense of an over-revered founding father. Best of all, reading McCullough is like swinging on a hammock on a warm spring day: pure, relaxed enjoyment.
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G. Yates (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
John Adams is another of McCullough's well written and well researched historical works. They are so well written that they pull the reader in as well as any novel, and to use a tired cliche, make history come alive. Despite being a history major, I was never enamored with early American history, and found most of the books on that era tedious. As a result, my reservoir of colonial knowledge is pretty dry, but Adams and the even better 1776 have begun to fill it. Rather than give a line by line recap of the book, I'll just hit a few highpoints for why I recommend it. It is very well written and well documented. It ties in well with other histories from the era. It allows one to see Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and some of the other worthies of the time through the eyes of a contemporary. Let me elaborate on that point since it seems to me to be one of the major strengths of McCullough. Because he weaves in the letters and journals of the principals one is able to get an unedited account of how the other figures were viewed, and allows one to either come to their own conclusions or to incorporate McCullough's analysis. Another strength is the ability to capture the bonds of friendship and love that few histories concentrate on. By the end of the book the marriage of John and Abigail will probably seem more vivid to you than the marriage of a close friend. It's not all battles and dates, in other words.
Finally there is the ability McCullough has to capture the mood of the times. Often after a long stint in the book I found myself living as much in the world of John Adams as in my own. It's a long tome, no doubt, but once he hits his stride (about the time Adams goes to France, I'd say) the pages just about turn by themselves. Highly Recommend.
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Ismail Elshareef (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Might as well! With incredible stories about men with integrity, candor and valor, like the ones in this book, contemporary leaders who are oftentimes venal and corrupt don't stand a chance! It's a shame such leaders are a rare commodity these days!
Unlike our current leaders, John Adams was an incredible man and a patriotic maverick that helped bring America into the marvel it is today. His undeniable acumen and astute sense of logic made him a likely person to work on drafting the most important and currently under attack document in American history: The Constitution.
The book is rife with countless stories that are incredible on their own merit, that's why it's hard to pick and choose what to spotlight. However, I have to say that the most endearing and at times heartbreaking element in this biography was the correspondence between John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams. So much of John Adams' soft and tender self was exposed in these letters and that definitely added a greater depth to an already great man.
Adams' integrity is also something very evident throughout the book. You see it in his practice as a lawyer, his relationship with his wife and family, his defiant stance in the face of the British being well aware that hanging was the punishment for treason, his unwavering desire to declare independence and write the Bill of Rights document. He was a visionary with a goal in mind and the right tools to get the job done. He never balked at hardship or challenge. He put his very life on the line protecting an idea he believed in. Alas, that's something I can't say about any of our current leaders.
John Adams is a great role model for all Americans and non-Americans alike. The story of his very accomplished and amazingly interesting life should be cherished and experienced and what a better medium to deliver that experience than a David McCullough book! Read it to get a glimpse of what real men and leaders are all about and maybe then you can make a prayer that one like John Adams comes along in the not very far future.
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