Rating: 
Summary: The Delight is in the Details...
Review: John Adams is so much fun to read, I'm already worrying about finishing it! I'll reread it, I always do reread David McCullough's books because the writing is so superb. John Adams was such a key player in the founding of our nation and yet I knew very little about the role he played. In Mr. McCullough's John Adams, the reader is steeped in the period and experiences his world so vividly. I seem to feel Adam's joys and frustrations each day as I gobble up page after page. McCullough's fans have been waiting for a long time for a new book and this one certainly satisfies. Thanks for another terrific reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: Adams Gets His Due
Review: With his biography of John Adams, David McCullough once again proves that he is THE preminent American historian of his generation. His Adams book is meticuously reasearched and yet very readible. This is historical writing at its very best in that it makes its subject come alive for the reader.And his subject is a man who, while certainly not forgotten, has not received his just due as a leader of the American Revolution. While Washington was a unifying symbol and Jefferson and Hamilton were great (if flawed) visionaries, Adams was a practical man of great devotion whose contributions to this nation were every bit as important. While Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, it was Adams whose forceful personality pushed it through the Continental Congress. Later on, as a Diplomat during the Revolution, Adams helped secure France's assistance, helped secure much needed financing from the Dutch and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ended the war on terms much more favorable to America than the military situation warranted. Adams went on to define the role of the Vice President as the first holder of that office. Then, facing the unenviable task of succeeding the mythical Washington as President, his biggest contribution was to steadfastly maintain peace with France. Thereby he not only avoided a potentially destructive war, he checked the rampant militarism of Hamilton and established the diplomatic climate that made possible the Louisiana Purchase three years later. His narrow defeat for reelection three years later represents the first peacible transfer of power in modern democratic times. McCullough tells of this with a master storyteller's eye. He uses Adams's own correspondence ands that of his extraordinary wife Abigal to good effect. He also portrays Adams's long and peculiar friendship with Jefferson, show how their lives were uniquely intertwined. This is a monumental book which in absence of real monument to Adams will have serve as a literary substitute.
Rating:
Summary: Neither historian nor scholar
Review: I'm simply a reader who wanted to know more about John and Abigail Adams and this book was full of the details that can round out a person's understanding of the people and circumstances which made the era. The writing was lush and compelling without being either flippant or dense. I enjoyed reading about the way in which John Adams chose to serve his country at the cost of the family life he so intensely desired. The portrait of a marriage is surprisingly "modern," with both sexual and intellectual components that might shock the reader but are welcome to a complete portrait of a great man. Will Jeffersonophiles be angry? I don't think so as long as they are able to see their hero as a man who wanted to contribute to the shape of this nation at the cost of personal purity.
Rating:
Summary: Just great
Review: A wonderful, engrossing book. If you have never read a biography of Adams, this is the one you should read. I find myself constantly thinking about Adams and his family and can't wait to pick it up again and rejoin them.
Rating:
Summary: Resurects and almost forgotten Founding Father
Review: Well, that is a bit of an exageration, but I don't think that that John Adams is very well known to even that part of the public that reads history for pleasure. This book will certainly change that, and hopefully we will learn to say his name in the same breath as Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington. He was no less important and deserves no less fame. An he certainly is more lovable as a man than I had ever thought. Next to Franklin, there is no founding father I more regret never having been able to meet. The book is short on his political thought and writings, which are an extremely important contribution to American political theory, but the book gives the general idea. It leaves one thirsting to know more.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I agree with several of the previous reviewers that this book was disappointing. After reading Truman and enjoying it tremendously, I was disappointed that this book does not live up to its predecessor. After finishing this book, I felt I had a thorough knowledge of what John Adams did and said, but this book left me with a very incomplete picture of the John Adams behind those words and actions. This is particularly evident in the motivations behind Adams' embracing the patriot cause as one reviewer previously pointed out. I also felt that this book could have been edited down a bit, that parts of it lagged. It is not a bad book and is probably worth reading. However, I had hoped for much more based on the author's previous works.
Rating: 
Summary: Our 2nd President . . . Without the Singing and Dancing
Review: My curiousity in John Adams first piqued by repeatedly in my youth watching the musical "1776" (of which Adams is the main character), I looked forward anxiously to McCullough's latest take on America's 2nd President. It didn't hurt that McCullough's bio "Truman" is still perhaps my favorite political biography of them all. With all these high expectations, I was waiting for my hopes to be dashed. But, nothing could be further from the truth. "Adams" is a terrific piece of work. Relying on a treasure trove of letters and correspondence written by Adams and his tremendous wife Abigail (both of whom were compulsive/obsessive writers), McCullough replays the history of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Washington Presidency and Adams's tumultuous four years as President with vibrant storytelling and just the right amount of detail without getting weighed down. In MuCullough's view, Adams was a brilliant, determined, forthright, nonpartisan, stubborn politician who was unabashedly American and ambitious for higher office only to the point that public service (according to Adams) was the greatest calling of all. Anybody looking for a line by line history of America's birth, from 1776 to 1800, will probably be disappointed. McCullough skips over the details of the American Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution. He instead tracks the diplomatic journeys of Adams, who travels to England, France and Holland with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (both occasionally) as they try to negotiate various peace and commercial treaties. The best surprise of the book? Abigail Adams, an amazing woman living entirely ahead of her time. Without her, McCullough obviously believes, John Adams would never have achieved his status in American history. The only disappointments in the book? A skewed and very negative portrayal of Alexander Hamilton, and a less-than-complete discussion of why two of Adams's sons, Thomas and Charles, came to financial and physical ruin, while another, John Quincy, became our 6th President. Though not quite as entrancing and new as "Truman," "John Adams" has its own charm. It's an amazing journey with America's inception, and a reminder of the greatness of all of our Founding Fathers, perhaps the most misunderstood of all being the delightfully stubborn and pigheaded Mr. Adams.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating History of A Great American
Review: Like most of us, I remember John Adams from the famous story about the pickle factory: a young man walks into the Adams Family Pickle Works in Greater Roxbury and falls into the biggest barrel of brine. His body goes undetected for several days, and then is processed with the rest of the pickles for sale. "And how did you find the pickles, young man?" Adams is reputed to have asked a visitor. "I loved them," said the man. "Especially the white one." McCullough clears this up right away: it never happened. But, apocryphal or not, this story has informed the opinions of millions as to this, one of our most underrated presidents, the man who forcibly took America and dragged her, kicking and screaming, into modernity. I was especially grateful for the full and complete story of the way in which Abigail brought her considerable influence to bear on foreign policy, charmingly baking "54-40 or Fight" cookies and passing them out to doubtful constituents. There is also the famous matter of Adams' final conversation with his old friend and rival, Thomas Jefferson. McCullough sheds fascinating light on this most complex of political and personal relationships: apparently, Jefferson phoned the aging Adams at home one evening to discuss some vital issues concerning the still-young republic. Something Adams said angered Jefferson, and the fiery Virginian slammed the phone down in the Bostonian's ear, which had never recovered from the cold to which it had been exposed at Mount Vernon during the Revolution. Adams took it upon himself to climb into the family surrey and travel hundreds of miles to Monticello to present Jefferson with a pan of Abigail's home baked Madeleines! True friends, despite all! Read this book and you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. It lives, breathes, and invokes American history.
Rating:
Summary: This book is AWESOME!
Review: This is a sanfrantastic book! Anyone who thinks otherwise is a chump.
Rating:
Summary: Readable but not always precise
Review: This is in many ways an excellent book. John Adams emerges from these pages as a man, often in his own inimitable words. The descriptions of places and people are wonderful. The illustrations include beautiful color portraits of Adams. In at least one case, however, there is a clear error of fact. On pages 229-31, McCullough describes how John Adams landed in Spain in December 1779 and made his way to Paris in February 1780. He states: "John Jay of New York, the American minister to Spain, had been in Madrid for a year, and his mission had proven hopeless, as the Spanish Court had no interest in recognizing the independence of the United States." John Jay had not been in Madrid for a year. He had not even arrived in Spain. He arrived at Cadiz on January 22, 1780, and arrived in Madrid on April 4, 1780. I located this because I am working on a biography of Jay. One minor error does not ruin a book. But it does lead one to wonder whether there are other minor errors of fact. McCullough footnotes all his direct quotes, but he generally does not footnote other facts. This is a book well worth owning and reading. But if one took the names off the dust jackets, and did a "blind reading," I am not sure that it betters in any way John Ferling's John Adams. And that book does footnote its facts.
| 
