John Adams

David McCullough; Edward Herrmann

ISBN 10: 0743504739 ISBN 13: 9780743504737

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2001

Synopsis

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of Truman sheds new light on America's second president, chronicling the life and times of Adams's youth, his career as a Massachusetts farmer and lawyer, his marriage to Abigail, his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, and his remarkable influence on the birth of the United States of America.

About this title

Review

Left to his own devices, John Adams might have lived out his days as a Massachusetts country lawyer, devoted to his family and friends. As it was, events swiftly overtook him, and Adams--who, David McCullough writes, was "not a man of the world" and not fond of politics--came to greatness as the second president of the United States, and one of the most distinguished of a generation of revolutionary leaders. He found reason to dislike sectarian wrangling even more in the aftermath of war, when Federalist and anti-Federalist factions vied bitterly for power, introducing scandal into an administration beset by other difficulties--including pirates on the high seas, conflict with France and England, and all the public controversy attendant in building a nation.

Overshadowed by the lustrous presidents Washington and Jefferson, who bracketed his tenure in office, Adams emerges from McCullough's brilliant biography as a truly heroic figure--not only for his significant role in the American Revolution but also for maintaining his personal integrity in its strife-filled aftermath. McCullough spends much of his narrative examining the troubled friendship between Adams and Jefferson, who had in common a love for books and ideas but differed on almost every other imaginable point. Reading his pages, it is easy to imagine the two as alter egos. (Strangely, both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.) But McCullough also considers Adams in his own light, and the portrait that emerges is altogether fascinating. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

David McCullough was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0743504739
• ISBN 13: 9780743504737
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 9