|
John Adams by David McCullough |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Subjects |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
PRESIDENTS_UNITED STATES UNITED STATES_POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT_1775-1783 ADAMS, JOHN, 1735-1826 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Description/Notes |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Destined for the same kind of sweeping success as his Pulitzer Prize-winning Truman, John Adams is a powerful, deeply moving biography that reads like an epic historical novel. Breathing fresh life into the American history, it takes as its subject the extraordinary man who became the second president of the United States & whose adventurous life & spirited rivalry with Thomas Jefferson encompasses both the American Revolution & the birth of the young republic. Deftly & with a brilliant eye for detail, McCullough describes the childhood, youth, & coming of age of Adams, the fiercely driven Massachusetts farmer-lawyer whose marriage to Abigail is one of the great real-life love stories, & of his rival Jefferson, the Virginia planter & slaveowner. Through their lives, McCullough explores the extraordinary factors that transformed thirteen colonies into a united nation & that eventually brought these two distinctly dissimilar men to the presidency. Sweeping the reader from America to Europe, & combining a cast of compelling characters with probing explorations of politics, courage, idealism, love, friendship, & life, John Adams. is bound to be the most talked-about book of the season. Praise for Truman: 'Remarkable...you may open it at any point & instantly become fascinated, so easy, lucid, & energetic is the narrative & so absorbing the sequence of events.' --The Economist. 'In this biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot - 'the colossus of independence,' as Thomas Jefferson called him - who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as 'out of his senses'; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.'--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved This biography takes as its subject the second president of the United States, John Adams. His adventurous life and spirited rivalry with Thomas Jefferson encompassed both the American Revolution and the birth of the young republic. From Chapter One: The Road to Philadelphia You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator....We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them. -- Abigail Adams I In the cold, nearly colorless light of a New England winter, two men on horseback traveled the coast road below Boston, heading north. A foot or more of snow covered the landscape, the remnants of a Christmas storm that had blanketed Massachusetts from one end of the province to the other. Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. Packed ice in the road, ruts as hard as iron, made the going hazardous, and the riders, mindful of the horses, kept at a walk. Nothing about the harsh landscape differed from other winters. Nor was there anything to distinguish the two riders, no signs of rank or title, no liveried retinue bringing up the rear. It might have been any year and they could have been anybody braving the weather for any number of reasons. Dressed as they were in heavy cloaks, their hats pulled low against the wind, they were barely distinguishable even from each other, except that the older, stouter of the two did most of the talking. He was John Adams of Braintree and he loved to talk. He was a known talker. There were some, even among his admirers, who wished he talked less. He himself wished he talked less, and he had particular regard for those, like General Washington, who somehow managed great reserve under almost any circumstance. John Adams was a lawyer and a farmer, a graduate of Harvard College, the husband of Abigail Smith Adams, the father of four children. He was forty years old and he was a revolutionary. Dismounted, he stood five feet seven or eight inches tall -- about 'middle size' in that day -- and though verging on portly, he had a straight-up, square-shouldered stance and was, in fact, surprisingly fit and solid. His hands were the hands of a man accustomed to pruning his own trees, cutting his own hay, and splitting his own firewood. In such bitter cold of winter, the pink of his round, clean-shaven, very English face would all but glow, and if he were hatless or without a wig, his high forehead and thinning hairline made the whole of the face look rounder still. The hair, light brown in color, was full about the ears. The chin was firm, the nose sharp, almost birdlike. But it was the dark, perfectly arched brows and keen blue eyes that gave the face its vitality. Years afterward, recalling this juncture in his life, he would describe himself as looking rather like a short, thick Archbishop of Canterbury. As befitting a studious lawyer from Braintree, Adams was a 'plain dressing' man. His oft-stated pleasures were his family, his farm, his books and writing table, a convivial pipe and cup of coffee (now that tea was no longer acceptable), or preferably a glass of good Madeira. In the warm seasons he relished long walks and time alone on horseback. Such exercise, he believed, roused 'the animal spirits' and 'dispersed melancholy.' He loved the open meadows of home, the 'old acquaintances' of rock ledges and breezes from the sea. From his doorstep to the water's edge was approximately a mile. He was a man who cared deeply for his friends, who, with few exceptions, were to be his friends for life, and in some instances despite severe strains. And to no one was he more devoted than to his wife, Abigail. She was his 'Dearest Friend,' as he addressed her in letters -- his 'best, dearest, worthiest, wisest friend in the world' -- while to her he was 'the tenderest of husbands,' her 'good man.' John Adams was also, as many could attest, a great-hearted, persevering man of uncommon ability and force. He had a brilliant mind. He was honest and everyone knew it. Emphatically in In his first book since 'Truman', one of America's most distinguished and popular biographers breathes life into history with this compelling look at the second president of the United States, John Adams. More than just a biography, this book looks at the birth of a young republic and explores the extraordinary factors that transformed 13 colonies into a united nation. of illustrations, many in color. David McCullough was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and educated there and at Yale. Author of Truman, Brave Companions, Mornings on Horseback, The Path Between the Seas, The Great Bridge, and The Johnstown Flood, he has received the Pulitzer Prize (in 1993, for Truman), the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and is twice winner of the National Book Award, for history and for biography |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Educational Sales Consultant:
Marsha Wipperman (PlanetWyatt)
Marsha Wipperman (PlanetWyatt)
Phone: 
Email:
Email: