John Adams

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book
Review: It has been said that "ignorance is bliss", and in my case it must be true. Considering some of the critical diatribes that have preceded my review I am gratefully unenlightened as regards the fineries of writing biographical history. I love this book precisely for some of the reasons previously stated by it's critics. McCullough takes me into the "the physical feel of Adams's life and times -- how it must have felt to ride horseback from Braintree, Massachusetts, to Philadelphia in January of 1776, for example" or enduring the insufferable heat, black flies and the deaths of thousands annually from smallpox epidemics. Mr. McCullough is indeed a great story teller and the context he provides in telling Adams story was/is fascinating to me. I could say much more on a positive note about the book but I will close by simply stating that I can open this book at any time to any page and have an enjoyable reading experience. Thank you for this wonderful book Mr. McCullough.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful introduction to American history
Review: As someone who eschewed learning and reading about American history for far too long, this book was a beautiful introduction to this significant historical period. Regardless of any publicly noted shortcomings, this book contained so many stories and references to events that I am drawn (if not compelled) to read, read, and read some more about the decades immediately preceding and following the period covered in the book. As well, reading this book and reflecting on the significant issues and events that took place during Adams' life, it was really eye-opening to think anew about recent political and world events. But above all, what I valued most about this book is that I was finally able to become completely immersed in so many aspects of an important historical figure's life, from the mundane to the profound, from the public to the private. It was a really wonderful experience!

Rating:
Summary: Typical of McCullough - Rock Solid
Review: McCullough has a gift. He has an ability to pick and interesting person and/or story and use it as the core of an engaging account of a place and time. John Adams is no different. McCullough tells the story of Adams, and in the telling captures for the reader just how fragile and uncertain a time the beginning of the United States was. What now seems a foregone conclusion was anything but at the time. The book tells a great story about a great man, but it also makes you appreciate the battle that the founding fathers fought to see our country through a veritable minefield on its way to a solid footing.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing biography
Review: John Adams is long but an absolutely beautiful biography. McCullough gives life to a man who, despite his amazing accomplishments, is often overlooked when history teaches about the American Revolution and the founding of our country. Adams, our second President, is not often given the credit he deserves as the so-called voice of the Declaration of Independence (being the loudest supporter of it in the Continental Congress), ambassador during and immediately after the Revolution, and our second President during the quasi-war with France under Napoleon.

Adams is often depicted as stubborn to the point of being obnoxious, but McCullough shows his humanity through his diary and correspondences with his wife Abigail, showing him as one our countries most thoughtful and intelligent founders who stuck with his positions and argued strongly to support them.

After reading this book, you will come away with a much better understanding of a man that history has in some ways overlooked, as well as a better understanding of the history of the time and other people involved. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and many more were a part of Adams' life and therefore are a part of this book. The book is very well written, rich in detail, and there is little doubt you will leave this book with a great amount of respect for our second President. It is a long read, but without a doubt well worth it. This is one of my favorite books, and definitely my favorite non-fiction book.


Rating:
Summary: some reservations about the book
Review: DAVID MCCOLOUGH ARE YOU READING THESE REVIEWS??????

I know your book won a Pulitzer prize, so it's hard to rag on it too much. And, yes, the book was extremely well-written and easy to read and full of lots of good and interesting information about John Adams, but after reading the 700 page tome I was still wondering how this guy managed to always be in the middle of things. I think it is pretty clear that the guy was truly irritating. Franklin called him "sometimes crazy and absolutely out of his mind", Washington ignored him as Vice-President and Hamilton practically ran things when Adams became President. Even Jefferson, his good friend from when they served together as envoys in Paris, eventually turned his back on him and ran against him for President.

Everyone hated or disparaged the guy, it seems, yet for some reason NOT EXPLAINED IN THE BOOK, he must have had some appeal to his constituents or else he would have perished. Otherwise, I don't see how a guy with what seemed scarcely any friends in the world managed to maintain his position at the top levels of government for so long. I assume....there was more to him.....

Rating:
Summary: McCullough's usual excellence
Review: I hate to say it, but I have so come to expect excellence from McCullough, that I find it unremarkable. Ever since his "Great Bridge", I have been enamored of his books. This one I found especially good because of my admiration for both the Adam's, and the fact the author has so humanized them both. My only criticism is that because he told only a little about their children (though telling it well), I now need to read more about THEM. The language has few flaws, the flow of events is told with the author's usual conversational ease, yet the language is elevated in all but a very few instances. I highly recommend this book for anyone with either a love of history or of biography.

Rating:
Summary: My new all-time favorite book
Review: Okay, so there's something about the John Adams character that appeals to me. I find him the most engaging of the fellows portrayed in the musical 1776. I root for him in the historic accounts of Continental Congress debates and the election of 1800. I find his wife the most empathetic of all the First Ladies.

David McCullough's book manages to make me love and admire this Founding Father even more. It doesn't matter that the tall and aristocratic Virginians Washington and Jefferson dwarfed Adams. It doesn't matter that the fourth estate ridiculed President Adam's corpulence or his lack of hair and teeth. It doesn't matter that Adams had a powderkeg temperament or an insatiable ego. The man whose heart is revealed in correspondence with his wife and friends, in the tenacity with which he fought for American independence and in the humility with which he accepted whatever role he was assigned in the service of his country - this is a great man, worthy of the admiration of all.

Thank you David McCullough for magnificently breathing life into this lively historical figure.

Rating:
Summary: "I am nothing, but I may be everything."
Review: John Adams is not the sexiest of America's ex-presidents and lives on largely in the shadows of the more famous and flashier founding fathers such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. David McCullough's biography, JOHN ADAMS, in part confirms this image of the second president: he was intensely private, reverent, and loyal. However, the positive qualities of the man come shining through as well in this work: his personal integrity, fidelity, and love of country. One comes away from reading JOHN ADAMS with the feeling that history has not given this man his due.

Nowhere does John Adams come off in a more positive light than when he is contrasted to his great friend and nemesis, Thomas Jefferson. Clearly, McCullough is a partisan of Adams, but one reading this book cannot help but feel the same. John Adams is the thrifty self-made man, Jefferson, the spendthrift playboy. Adams is the only founding father strongly against slavery on moral grounds, and yet history only remembers him for the Alien and Sedition Acts.

But, the man alone does not make the biography. What makes JOHN ADAMS a great biography and a recommended read is McCullough's narrative style which brings life to the man and brings the reader fully into the world of the revolutionary and early nationhood period of American history.

Jeremy W. Forstadt

Rating:
Summary: Interesting biography of an uninteresting man
Review: This is a very readable book about John Adams, but I came away thinking just what I thought before of John Adams. He really isn't all that interesting.
That said, this book is far more interesting when dealing with the other characters involved. For example, we have Benjamin Franklin stabbing John Adams in the back, and we have Thomas Jeffereson stating that he needs his slaves for their labor to help pull him out of debt. We have the French trying to use the nearly independent United States for their own profit (not a big suprise there, eh?!). And the English trying to ignore the United States.
The author did a very good job making a book on John Adams interesting, but I found the interesting parts were about everything except John Adams. John Adams was just another politician, but he was different in that he was HONEST and was really concerned about his country more than his own interests. But we really don't learn why John Adams is so patriotic. Why did he take a chance on losing all he had to support the American Revolution--I don't know from reading this book. We also learn relatively nothing about Adams' early life before the Revolutionary time. In the end, this isn't so much a biography of Adams as it is a description of a segment of time in which Adams lived and the part he took in it.
I also found that the author tried to make Adams into a hero, which maybe he was, but the author did gloss over or totally ignored seemingly all of Adams faults, while giving us a glowing review of his better side. For example, whenever Adams has a problem with other people (Franklin, Jefferson, or whoever) it seems the other guy--never Adams--is to blame.
All in all, it is just an okay book. I am not sure why it has received so many glowing reviews. It is worth reading, but there are many other books concerning this time period that I think are better.