This calm, well-mannered book was light on history and long on daily experience outside of history. It is a biography that tells surprisingly little about what John Adams did, and instead tells much about what he experienced, through the medium of his, and his wife’s, letters. There are also interesting insights on Jefferson, Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin.

It is a soothing read, but what makes it soothing also makes it not quite satisfying. One doesn’t get the historical “so what” of, say His Excellency, George Washington, which I highly recommend, but one does get a good view of the weather, habits and manner of speaking of the revolutionary colonists. But it did leave me wanting a bit more historical insight and punch. I also felt this way about this author’s book on the Wright Brothers, where we get much detail on Wilbur’s activities in France, but less on the sheer wonder of his astonishing accomplishment. For that, I recommend To Conquer the Air by Tobin. To be fair, McCullough’s approach certainly helps to bring back and humanize these persons who were so crucial to the founding of the United States and is therefore worthwhile and deserving of appreciation.

Did you other Goodreaders know? Through this biography, David McCullough won his second Pulitzer Prize for "Best Biography or Autobiography."

So much scholarship went into this lively portrayal of President Adams, yet I never detected a whiff of sweat.

What made the biggest impression on me was learning more about Thomas Jefferson. Sadly, the more I learn about Jefferson, the less I like him. While, through this biography, John and Abigail Adams became heroes to me.

So I’m sitting here bawling because John Adams just died. It doesn’t seem to matter that it happened 182 years ago.

The best biographers understand that a biography is not only a history of the title subject but a time machine to the time in which he or she lived. Having read David McCullough’s John Adams, I now feel like I was in the room when John (look at that, we’re on a first-name basis) rose in Congress to speak in support of the Declaration of Independence, like I was sitting at Abigail’s elbow when she wrote to him wherever he was, Philadelphia, Paris, Amsterdam, London. There are so many great word pictures, like the one of John helping to repel boarders when his ship came under attack crossing the Atlantic, told this time in the words of the ship’s captain.

And Abigail. Has there ever been such a woman? Has there ever been such a partnership? It’s almost enough to make me believe in marriage.

Of course it helps that John and Abigail both were such indefatigable correspondents (they weren’t happy that they were so many times separated but we sure lucked out) and such amazingly good writers. The quality of their writing, as well as that of their multitude of other correspondents is certain to leave you wondering where the hell that ability went.

McCullough’s organizational skills in plucking just the right phrase from just the right letter are astonishing, and his own prose doesn’t suffer by comparison, either. A glorious, you-are-there book.

I read John Adams largely because my grandfather's response when I told him I was reading Alexander Hamilton last year was "I hear that John Adams biography is excellent." Additionally, I was interested because Hamilton was always at odds with him, but I like them both a great deal (and incidentally do not feel the same way about Thomas Jefferson).

This book did not disappoint. McCullough masterfully selected quotations of Adams, Abigail, John Quincy, Benjamin Rush, Jefferson, and other major players in Adams's life, and incorporated them without disrupting the prose. Every thirty pages or so I found a quote so striking that I wrote it down in a little notebook, or marked the page number on the post-it I used as a bookmark.

Through quotes and narrative alike, the book illustrates the remarkable, influential man John Adams was, from his years negotiating peace and loans in Europe to his one term as the nation's second President. Adams's thoughts on education, slavery, war, and the dangers of faction are compelling; his conduct in the face of constantly being misunderstood complicated and sympathetic; his ever-present integrity inspiring. In fact, at least for the moment, the admiration I've developed for Adams through McCullough's book has rendered my regard for Hamilton something closer to an infatuation.

If the book has one flaw, it is in McCullough's confrontation of Adams's. Whereas the picture of Adams is for the most part brilliantly developed, the book at some point discusses his lapses in judgment, his temper, his indignation, as if it were assumed knowledge. True, these aspects of his personality were likely not as well preserved for history in letters, but I would have liked this to be fleshed out more and earlier on. This is not to say that McCullough pedestalizes Adams; I only wished to understand better these qualities of his. Also, McCullough handles some of Adams's obtrusive character traits quite well - I literally giggled imagining Adams presiding over the first Senate debates, unable to refrain from butting in in spite of his own intentions to refrain from doing so.

I cannot neglect to mention Abigail in discussing her husband's biography. John and Abigail had a great romance of the kind I had sort of thought rare in general, but especially in that era. Their need for each other, the pain they express at being apart, their unyielding support for one another, and the deep deep friendship that resulted in Abigail's fond salutation to Adams as her "dearest friend," shine through in the book to demonstrate their unique bond. Intellectual, opinionated Abigail was a treat to read about. Her accounts of France in general were fabulous, and one of the highights of the entire book for me was her description of meeting and despising a preeminent French woman Benjamin Franklin had raved about (page 305-06).

Less substantive matters - the book includes a family tree chart at the beginning that I constantly referred back to. The part and chapter breaks were appropriate, and the index is comprehensive and easy to navigate. Finally, a word about length: this is a book you have to be a bit patient with. It's about 700 pages long and starts off in a slow, arguably boring description of Adams's simple beginning as the son of a New England farmer, facts which of course literally define Adams. Stick with it through the first hundred pages or so, resign yourself to at least a couple of months with it, and what you never knew about Adams is sure to enrich your understanding of the fascinating times in which he lived.

Excellent. I think Mr McCullough is the most readable of modern historians (a tie w/ Goodwin, Ambrose, & Weir?).

FEBRUARY

19. n  n by n  n David McCullough

Finish date: 01 February 2022
Genre: Biography
Rating: A++++++++++++
Review:

Bad news: Part 1 - the book does not start with a bang. So please, do NOT give up on this book! Timeline: 8 months: Felt like reading a 18th C. version of C-Span….blow by blow accounts of the Congress of Philadelphia and the difficult birth of a new United Stats of America, July 4, 1776. Nice to read/skim….but all in all boring because we've all read so much about this.

Good news Part II - Now book really picks up steam on page beginning with Adams's departure to France with young son, John Quincy. Adams will join Ben Franklin at French court to negotiate an alliance. I especially liked CH 6…JUST WONDERFUL! It is a tender, loving look at a husband and wife reunited July 20 1784…after a separation of 4 years!! Abigail overcomes her fears of the North Atlantic sea voyage b/c her love for “my dearest “ is stronger.

Good news: Woman's perspective....always great to read!! Abigail Adams’s descriptions of the North Atlantic voyage (ship, crew and weather). She has the eye for detail that just gives the reader a pause from all the ‘history’. Abigail Adams was a down-to-earth New England puritan and her observations about the French Louis XVI court and the snobbish British society are so much fun to read.

Good news: Part III - John Adams's term as 2nd President of US: Intrigue , backstabbing politics and finally returning to Peacefield...his home in Massachusetts.

Personal: Reading this book has given met the needed background to finally watch epic series 2008 John Adams. It won 13 Prime Time Emmy awards including Best Actor Paul Giamatti.

The greatest strength of this book... and also any other books by D. McCullough is the author’s ability to bring history to life! People are living and breathing on every page!
Motto John Adams...I will follow his advice! “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket. You will never have an idle hour.”

Mrs. Adams’s narrative with vivid, insightful details brings a feeling of balance in the book…the frenetic revolution, war, and birth of an independent US….and the tender scenes of domestic life with John Adams and her children.

For all the biographies I've read….never have I enjoyed reading a bio as much as this one. Don't make the same mistake I did, judged the book by the cover...again! I thought this would be just another a stuffy history book. How wrong I was. It was biography with a pulse and also a love story! Call me sappy and overly sentimental, but I was absolutely awe struck by the level of commitment and affection that John and Abigail felt and showed to one another even across great distances and during long years when they hardly even saw each other.
#MustRead

There’s a reason this biography is a classic. McCullough does a great job of adding context to why Adams did what he did or stayed passive on the situation such as the almost war with France. Is a 4.5/5 but I can’t give every biography I read a 5/5.

One of the best books I have ever read.

And five stars for me for finishing this frickin thing. It’s fun to learn history through a single person I think. Thomas Jefferson was a disgusting, mousy idiot shmuck and Alexander Hamilton was a little weasel man-baby. I liked reading it even though it was slow.

I haven’t read a book this good in years!

I cannot imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this book.

This is a book about a man, John Adams, but it is also much, much more. It is a book about American Independence, the American Revolution and n  alln the Founding Fathers, the seven most important being George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, George Madison and Benjamin Franklin. The book follows all the events from the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution, through the presidencies of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Madison, James Monroe and finally John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president!
This is a book about people, each very different in character, but the author brings each one of them to life. I adore learning about people. I loved the book for this reason alone. You understand how the individuals think, what they feared, what they loved, what made each one special. You understand their differences. It is the little details that will make you LOVE this book. John Adams, this guy wrote volumes in the margins of his books. Jefferson loved his books too, but rarely did he write in them. The relationship between these two men is extraordinary. John Adams relationship with his wife Abigail is extraordinary too!

I love how it taught me history, and it was never ever boring. I don’t read books about politics, but this book is definitely about politics, and I adored it! I normally avoid books on politics because I find them confusing. Why? Because for me politics doesn’t follow the rules of logic. A party claims they stand for a given set of principles, but then the politicians do not follow these principles. The result is that I get confused. A central theme is, and particularly John Adams presidency and the following election where he sought his second term but lost it to Jefferson, was a battle of politics, and yet I understood exactly what was happening. This book is clear, informative and presents a balanced view of all the prime players.

John Adams by David McCullough is stupendous. I cannot help but compare it with Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, which I recently read and loved, but Isaacson’s book doesn’t come near to McCullough’s. John Adams wrote letters to all his contemporaries, to newspapers, public officials, friends and his dear wife Abigail. He kept diaries. John Adams was opinionated. Jefferson and Franklin were close-mouthed! After his presidency, when he was much older, Adams wrote copious letters to his dear friend and previous arch-enemy, Jefferson. Adams is the person to follow if you are interested in learning about American Independence, American life in the colonies during the 1700s and about France and England and Holland too, about the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. It is all here and it is all interesting.

Every page has quotes. Don’t assume that this makes the book dry and difficult to read. The opposite is true! You learn about the peculiarities of all the important Founding Fathers. Jefferson bought and bought and bought. He couldn’t stop buying. It is the way the author depicts these small idiosyncrasies that will make you laugh out loud! Jefferson lists all that he buys, but the funniest is that the columns and columns of purchased items are never added up. Never. Both Adams and Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence!!!!! Guess which one was wealthy then! I REALLY love this book and I want you to understand that this is the book to choose if you have any curiosity about any of the Founding Fathers, about American Independence or about life in Europe during the 1700s and early 1800s.

Have I convinced you to choose this book? Here is another reason why! The descriptions of the people, places and events are vivid! When the British ships are set to attack at Staten Island you see them in the sun and you feel the imminent threat. At Washington's inauguration he travels in a canary yellow carriage pulled by white horses. I am skipping all over the place, I know, but the descriptive quality of the lines is perfect throughout the entire book. I personally adored the depiction of French, English and Dutch mores. I adored how family problems are described so you laugh. Charles, one of Adams’ sons, had some difficulties in Harvard and almost got thrown out. Yes, they were running around naked. But wait, you will cry too when you learn of his final fate. “Moral” and so very devoted to his wife as Adams is, you should hear his conversation with the French women! “Instincts” will show us what to do, he replies to a tricky question about men and women’s sexual behavior! :0) This reply is just so perfect; it is so “Adamsee”! And Hamilton, oh what he does! I could wring his neck!

All the details are amusing, engaging, thorough, and accurate. When I compare Isaacson’s versus McCullough’s portrait of Benjamin Franklin, I feel that McCullough’s is superior. His is unbiased and clear-sighted. An author may not “fall in love” with the character being portrayed; impartiality is essential. So here is my advice: read John Adams first! The two are similar, but this one is superior. Read Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life afterwards if you then still want a little bit more about Franklin’s scientific inventions. Nelson Runger is the narrator of both of the audiobooks. Yes, he slurps and seems to need to swallow his saliva repeatedly, but there is less of that in McCullough’s book. His French pronunciation could definitely be improved, but otherwise the narration is fine. Don’t shy away from either audiobook for these reasons. The narration’s speed and clarity is fine, and that is what is most important.

I really did enjoy Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, but I absolutely loved John Adams! And I think I sort of have a crush on John Adams, even with his faults! What a man! What a time! What writing!

Well now I just want to read a biography on Abigail Adams. Watch me discuss this book in my June wrap up: https://youtu.be/NMt7tt6GeA0

#5 Best Book I Read During 2020

When the door opened, they proceeded, Adams, as instructed, making three bows, or "reverences," one on entering, another halfway, a third before "the presence."
"The United States of America have appointed me their minister plenipotentiary to Your Majesty," Adams began, nearly overcome with emotion.
"I felt more than I did or could express," he later wrote. Before him, in the flesh, was the "tyrant" who, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, had plundered American seas and burned American towns, the monarch "unfit to be the ruler of a free people," while to the King, he himself, Adams knew, could only be a despised traitor fit for the hangman's noose.

If John Adams had only been the first ambassador to England after the war, that would have been enough to get a fascinating book about the revolution. What a cool moment, standing in front of King George after all that had happened. But ambassador to England was just one of about a zillion noteworthy things Adams did in his lifetime.

I'm in the middle of a project of trying to learn about the American Revolution by reading a biography of each of the founding fathers. With Hamilton I got a look at the foundations of the federal government. With Washington I got the view from the troops on the ground. With Franklin I got a look at the foundations of revolution - how people went from faithful subjects to rebels.

You get a lot of all those things with Adams too, but this book on Adams gives you something entirely unique to the rest - his relationship with Abigail. Their letters to each other are an American treasure, and they give you a view of the revolution through the eyes of a family.

Adams is the first of the founding fathers I've read about who was actually a family man. You might think that would make the book less interesting (Washington and Franklin were able to do the amazing things they did because they were able to make family less of a priority), but instead it makes the book more interesting. Adams' view of everything that happens is completely tied up in and shaped by his relationship with his family. It grounded him. He was a revolutionary hero, no doubt, but this is definitely the story of what happens when an ordinary man is thrown into the middle of world-changing events. And the events do not change him one bit.

I think if I'm ranking the founding father books so far, I would put them like this: 1. Chernow's Hamilton book. 2. This book. 3. Brands' Franklin book. 4. Chernow's Washington book. But I love all four.

Some notes:
- I had always been told that after the 1800 election, Adams and Jefferson hated each other for the rest of their lives. That's not at all true, mostly because Adams' wasn't really capable of hating anybody. He always managed to get rocky relationships smoothed back out. Jefferson and Adams were friends pretty much all the way through, even when their relationship was occasionally strained.
- Having said that, every book I read about the founding fathers makes me like Thomas Jefferson even less.
- Came away from this book really impressed by John Quincy Adams. Looking forward to reading more about him in the future.
- The best part of this book for me was Adams' first trip across the Atlantic, when he disobeyed the ship's captain's instructions and joined in a battle with a British warship. Great story.
- John and Abigail never wavered in their hatred against slavery, something only Hamilton and Jay among the founding fathers can say.
- Interesting to see the difference in how Franklin and Adams in Paris is handled by Brands in his book about Franklin and McCullough in his Adams book. In the Franklin book Adams is a bore and a killjoy. In the Adams book Franklin is a hindrance to progress and lazy. Both appear to be at least partly true, but it's interesting to see the same story from two different points of view.