From Publishers Weekly
Decreeing our second president the "most misconstrued and underappreciated 'great man' in American history," Ellis, a history professor at Mount Holyoke College, sets out to recover the Adams legacy obscured by the "triumph of liberalism." His notable study focuses on Adams (1735-1826) in retirement in Quincy, Mass., starting in 1801. Drawing on Adams's correspondence, his journalism and his marginalia in the books he read, Ellis shows the one-term president during his first 12 years of private life fulminating over the country's direction, then mellowing. But Adams would remain oppositional and tart: "Was there ever a Coup de Theatre that had so great an effect as Jefferson's penmanship of the Declaration of Independence?" Ellis argues that Adams, incapable of political self-protection and with an insufferable personal integrity, internalized what he viewed as the nation's failings--ambition, lust for distinction, etc.--and struggled to keep a check on such qualities within himself. He and Jefferson differed fundamentally on the meaning of the American Revolution; their disagreement, according to Ellis, was not about means but about ends: Jefferson made "a religion of the people," Adams proposed that democratization should be evolutionary. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
From Library Journal
Of all the brilliant cast of characters who brought the United States into being, none is more noteworthy or more controversial than John Adams. In this biography, Ellis (history, Mount Holyoke) focuses on the last part of Adams's life in an attempt to dissect and illuminate the contradictory nature of this great man. In this detailed yet readable account, the reader is told that "Adams did not just read books. He battled them." One of his favorite authors was Bolingbroke, but he considered Voltaire a "liar." A man like Adams is heard loudly through the centuries; collections of his letters will always be invaluable, but Ellis's work is an appropriate and well-researched adjunct to the original sources. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
- Katherine Gillen, Mesa P.L., Ariz.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
- Katherine Gillen, Mesa P.L., Ariz.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
