When you can't get enough of John Adams there is always this book. Professor Ellis provided a wonderful service by allowing us readers to look at John Adams from a variety of perspectives and dimensions that would never be revealed in a biography. It was well worth the effort. This book is a keeper.

History is a fascinating field to read and ponder. After I read a work like Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams I find myself reflecting on how the author manipulates time to awaken their subject from past. Ellis is a great guide to this distant place in time as he first introduces his character at the point when he is leaving his tenure as president rather than starting from Adams's brith. Here we find a reflective statesmen who is looking back on his public service, political philosophy, and relationships in letters and writing. Candid, often contrarian, and brutally honest, John Adams left us a delightful insight into his own character that Ellis expertly examines through a variety of different lenses. The scope itself is from the perspective of maturity given that the narrative is told from retirement on, and it gains complexity when the subject is viewed through specific considerations and contrasted with those he shared letters with.

One of the most interesting of these is the lens of political philosophy. Adams was not one to over romanticize the republic of the United States nor indulge in any fanciful nostalgia for what his generation created through revolution. He placed his personal, generational, and national faults in plain sight for us, inhabitants of the 21st century, which sets him apart from the other Founders. Where Jefferson thought of democracy and individual liberty as being paramount to a political system or Madison with pockets of factions creating a just balance within a large republic, Adams preached a suspicion of aristocracy. In this sense, aristocracy was the rule of few not only dependent on wealth or privilege, but rather on the ability to hold influence over the many. While none of the Founders fit neatly into the ideologies of modern American, Adams proved to be fairly prescient in his cautionary musings.The second most interesting lens is his correspondence with Jefferson and John Taylor. This is where iron met iron and Adams would thrive in the combative discourse between friends. His prolific letter writing and vast knowledge of ancient politics made him a very likable opponent even for those who had found him obnoxious while governing.

Ellis's analysis into Adams's effect on his contemporaries creates a provocative chorus for those of us who find ourselves falling into the trap of worship that these men are often unnecessarily are given. (The same would go for unnecessary demonization as well).

Among America's dominant political theologians he remained the avowed agnostic and therefore the most astute analyst of political power's inherent intractability. In the end, he could not bring himself to believe that there were any ultimate answers to the overlapping problems of self-government or national government, at least none that did not contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. P. 173

Passionate Sage proves to be a fine gateway book into reading more about John Adams along the Founding generation. We put these folks high on pedestals and carve them out of marble. Thankfully, Adams left us some noticeable flaws to pick at which will eventually tumble the monuments and leave the vulnerable cores of human nature that all of these figures possessed.

Good book on Adams, one of the most forgotten Founders.

Ellis does a great job of showing Adams as the complex man he was--he was a perfect example of the kind of person whose flaws and strengths cannot be separated. He was a realist and that didn't lead to his popularity--in his own time or later. As Ellis wonderfully writes: “Finally, he was linked historically with Jefferson as the supreme embodiment of the American dialogue: he was the words and Jefferson was the music of the ongoing pageant begun in 1776; he was the ‘is,’ Jefferson was the ‘ought’ of American politics.” 213 Yet, though a political realist, he was personally passionate about friendship and could not hold a grudge against someone who had attacked him, as Ellis writes, “he could forgive and forget, not because he had achieved stoic detachment, but because he had never lost a childlike impulse to share his deepest personal feelings.” While being a brilliant thinker, Adams manages also to make you feel like he is everybody's favorite curmudgeonly uncle.

Some of my other favorite quotes:

“Adams objected to Jeffersonian rhetoric because it tended to rhapsodize about the omniscience of popular majorities in much the same way that medieval defenders of papal and monarchical power had claimed a direct connection to the divine. For Adams, the threat to the American republic could just as easily come from the left as the right; democratic majorities were just as capable of tyranny as popes and kings.” 130

“’The best republics will be virtuous,’ he noted in the Defence, ‘and have been so; but we may hazard a conjecture, that the virtues have been the effect of the well ordered constitution, rather than the cause.’” 149

“Adams kept insisting that he was not celebrating the enduring social divisions within America at all; he was only calling attention to their existence, refusing to believe the lovely lie that the American environment acted as a kind of solvent that dissolved away all social distinctions and class differences.” 158

“one of his deepest political convictions: namely, that comprehensive theories of politics were invariably too neat and rational to capture the maddening messiness of the real world.” 172

This was interesting not least because it preceded McCullough's full John Adams biography. It thus offers a unique perspective on Adams' historical importance and relevance before the popular upward revision in his assessed value prompted by the later book. It focuses on Adams' retirement years with the reconciliation and correspondence with Jefferson figuring prominently. Ellis compares and contrasts the two very skillfully as he portrays Adams as the most engagingly human of the founders as he points out the inherent contradictions in his character. Despite this, though, he illustrates that most of his political enemies were unable to dislike him personally. I like to read about the founding generation in order to try to make sense of our present political and societal climate. It's interesting that while Jefferson saw nothing but an optimistic future for the country post-revolution, Adams foresaw the cyclical nature of politics and the tenuous hold of our form of government based on his refusal to believe in American exceptionalism. To summarize his thinking, if Rome and Athens fell, America is likely to fall, too. More than anything else, though, I took the fundamental difference between Jefferson and Adams to be the emphasis of freedom for the former vs. equality for the latter. I'd never considered the essential opposition of these two ideals. This opposition remains with us today with one party emphasizing liberty over all while the other places primacy on fairness. This has been true throughout human history and I can't imagine it ever changing since it strikes me as a basic tenet of human nature.

As usual, an exceptionally well researched book by Dr. Ellis about who is perhaps one of the lesser understood members of what we consider to be our founding fathers.

Joseph J. Ellis writes biographies that I love reading. His ability to both make the men he writes about feel relevant to the modern age and to analyze both their legacy and character is, to me, remarkable. He brings these men out of history, and turns them from marble to flesh. It is fitting, then, that he would do this to a man who warned so furiously against the idea that Americans had overcome what he considered to be the deepest set instincts of man: a search for power, and a tendency toward corruption.

Ellis' analysis first of what Adam felt and was like gives us an image of an old friend, a pessimistic curmudgeon at times, a prophetic sage at his best. The more recent work by David McCullough doesn't make this work obsolete, as it is an insightful description of the personality of our second president. One of my favorite lines in the book describes both what made Adams a powerful but not particularly liked man on the political front, as well as why his historical presence has been so overshadowed by men like Jefferson, and this is Ellis' assertion that Adams was only optimistic when he wanted to be contrary, his every energy devoted to being "the great American caveat." It is not popular now, and was not popular even then, to view the men of the revolutionary generation, especially Washington, as anything short of semi-mythic, untouchable near-deities. Even in his own lifetime Adams deplored this idea, and considered it ahistorical. His belief was always that the more important revolution was and always would be in the people, and that a title like "The Father of His Country" "belong to no man, but to the American People."

It was this belief, along with his sometimes unfortunately prophetic pessimism, and his deeply personal and rooted belief that the will of the people is not inherently beyond corruption (a stunningly relevant idea, even today) that made him a caveat in his own time. Ellis expertly and eloquently draws the Adams portrait, by letting us grow attached to Adams' quirky, personal, and touching traits. He was the only one of the revolutionary generation who was outspoken in his belief that slavery was both morally wrong and would divide the republic, who assumed that women would necessarily be given more rights (if not quite in a modern sense), and the only one who argued so coherently that giving men like him "superhuman qualities... robs their character of consistency and their virtues of all merit." It was perhaps this, Ellis suggests, that partially shadowed Adams' legacy, because unlike Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, Adams could never keep his mouth and his opinions quiet long enough to create the images that his contemporaries carefully groomed.

This book is a treasure for these insights into one of the most interesting humans of his generation, even if his belief that "there is no special providence for Americans" or their destiny is an opinion that would cause so many to cry foul today. His inability to let himself be anything but a contrarian on almost every developing national belief would make him an oddity. His pessimistic warnings about the dangers of what he called the 'aristocracy' and the proper role of government would make him attacked in his own time. Still, he held his ground. Power, he believed, was inherently corruptible, but only government could reign in the personal freedoms that Jefferson (and generations of American since) have argued is the single most sacred concept framed into the constitution. It is in that way that this book manages to do its most important duty, one that Adams would be proud of - and that is to be the voice of necessary caution still opposite Jefferson ideals, a cooling mist to the flame of American manifest destiny.

If you liked this, Ellis' biography of Washington is another good sketch of a man from the myth.

This was excellent. I am a big fan of Adam's political writings and have enjoyed the surge in biographies on him. This book as inspired some of the more recent books, movies and projects on Adams.

This was more like a biography of thought and legacy. It focuses on Adam's retirement period and uses it to explore the development of Adam's character, thought and legacy. Ellis always paints an honest picture, of both his subjects positives and negatives. No one is better at that aspect of biography.

Adams is one of my over all heroes and is chief in my list of Statesman and politicians.

"I've just been in the mind of a genius." -The Patriot

Passionate Sage is not a linear biography of John Adams, it aims to dissect and analyze the man underneath the basic chronology of Adams' life and his impact on the Revolutionary period. I'm glad I read David McCullough's biography of John Adams first. McCullough gives enough background for the reader of this book to appreciate Ellis' posits and conclusions (and offset Ellis' semi-regular time jumping).

As is discussed in the book, Adams is tragically underappreciated among the founding fathers. Maybe the most intellectually gifted of the founders (perhaps matched only by James Madison), it was ironically Adams' grunt work in persuasion and difficult decision-making, more so than any instituted ideas, that proved to be Adams' greatest contributions: rousing the Continental Congress to pursue independence, serving as a critical diplomat to bring about a successful end to the Revolutionary War, avoiding war with France while President to set a precedent of diplomacy, and after a nasty Presidential campaign in 1800 against his estranged friend, Thomas Jefferson, shocked the leaders of nations across the world by committing to a peaceful transfer of power, thus proving that republican democracy was a plausible system of government. The United States would be unrecognizable without these contributions, but they have never been allowed to echo through history the same way as the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or winning the Battle of Yorktown. And unfortunately I doubt anyone will be writing a hip-hop musical about John Adams anytime soon.

John Adams' friend and fellow Revolutionary, Benjamin Rush, described Adams and Thomas Jefferson as "the North and South Poles of the American Revolution. Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all." Based on this metaphor, it might be fair to argue that the modern United States is out of balance, because it has taken on a little too much Jeffersonian democracy and not enough democracy of John Adams. In the closing paragraphs, Joseph Ellis describes how John Adams would be pleased the democracy he helped found has lasted this long, but would likely lament how the ideological descendants of Jeffersonianism have spoiled the American people to the "widespread presumption of unbridled individual freedom, unencumbered by any internalized sense of social responsibility and even justified as a fulfillment of the Revolution." By his own words, John Adams never expected to be remembered with magnificent monuments or memorials (and so far he hasn't), but perhaps the best way we can memorialize the man is to consider and heed his sage wisdom.

Moreso a treatise on American ways of thinking about government/political science than it is a biography.

Ellis assumes you know the basic contours of John Adams’s political career and begins with his retirement and post-career musings, including his correspondence with career rival Thomas Jefferson.

Many people like to say, “the founding fathers thought x,” or, “the founding fathers wanted y,” as if the founding generation could ever agree on literally anything. Politics have always been more complicated than most people care to remember.

Adams’s insight into the darker side of human nature and the ability of the majority to *always* be correct feels pretty prescient now, as does his stance that all nation-states eventually fail, and the practice of government is essentially an exercise in how long people can stave it off.

Different ways of thinking about American history reside within, and the author is masterful of looking not only at Adams the man but at how his political theories affected people and systems around him, and whether the subsequent history has proved him (or Jefferson) right.

I seem to agree with Adams on his views both of human nature (not an idyllic thing if only it could break free from the bonds of government) as well as capitalism (not a force purely for good if left as unrestrained as possible).

I am now eager to read more Ellis.

Quite interesting history and analysis of John Adams' retirement years. This is a kind of psychoanalysis of Adams peculiar nature and an apology of sorts for why Adams created so many enemies leading up to his retirement. A good deal of the book is devoted to the famous reconciliation with Jefferson through the hundreds of letters they corresponded leading up to the incredible coincidence of they're both dying on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The author gives his theories on why it is Jefferson who is remembered today and not Adams. This is a very scholarly work and probably only of interest to fans of John Adams.

Excellent examination of the character of John Adams. If you're looking for a chronological biography of the second US president, this is not it. However, Ellis provides great insight into Adams's character, ideology, personal and intellectual development, and legacy. Highly recommended read for anyone interested in political history of the early republic or in presidential history.