A book about a book. Every book should have its biography written.

Wills is never not interesting, but I wasn't crazy about the way he structured this book and found the first third (a more or less straightforward biography of Henry Adams) much more compelling than the two sections dealing with his interpretation of Adams's History of the United States; at times it felt as though Wills had forgotten entirely about Adams and was writing his own history.

This was a good book with plenty of interestign details about America, history teaching in the US and Henry Adams himself. I learned quite a bit while reading this book. The books biggest problem was it's concept of redeeming Henry Adams does not really make for entertaining reading. Wills succeeds in proving his thesis, but it does get very repetitive when he is compelled to bash Adams critics. I'd rather have been reading more about the historical points than tally all the ways in which Adams critics were wrong.

Okay, I couldn't get past the first chapter. It lost me at, " But Adams was aware that he was mired in a pretenious muddle of families, of whom the Adamses were the last and the least". It went on and on and on and on like that, Poor Henry Adams...until I closed the book.

This book is several things at once. It is American history covering the Jefferson and Madison administrations. Yet it is this history as seen by reflecting on Henry Adams' life and his nine-volume History of the United States of America, and criticizing, when (rarely) appropriate, Adams' text and (often and vigorously) other commentators and critics.

There is a thesis running throughout. On the surface it is to maintain that, contrary to most interpretations, Adams saw the administrations of Jefferson and Madison as progressive, as basically good years, because they adapted the nation to geopolitical realities and witnessed and promoted growth and national unity. Dig a bit deeper and it is a commentary and evaluation which distinguishes the virtues of adaptive, democratic politics from the debits of that kind of conservatism which, during these presidencies, characterized the Federalists--a commentary with implied relevance to all times.

Very good recap of Adam's classic multi-volume "History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison." Wills de-revisionizes the historian's viewpoint of Adams that he was an apologist for the Presidents in his family and for New England, and anti-Republican and anti-Southern.

Wills show how Adams, instead of attacking the Republican Virginians Jefferson and Madison or clairming that they discredited themselves by turning into Federalists, traced the United States in their hands growing beyond those labels into a "nation".

And Wills reminds us of the quality of Adam's writing, his groundbreaking archival research, and his international focus. Many historians of the period, especially of the events leading up to and during the War of 1812, focus just on events at home, while Adams shows through his deep archival research in England, France, and Spain that many of these events were driven by events abroad.

Henry Adams was capable of stitching together the history of past human events using the needle of wit.

historian for historian's sake

Adams, according to Wills, is underappreciated and, in particular, his nine volume History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is a neglected masterpiece. Wills’s goal is clearly twofold: prove his point and get you to read the masterpiece. However, when I am reading a single volume book summarizing a masterpiece of nine volumes I admit I’m thinking better than two birds with one stone is getting ten volumes by reading one. But Wills isn’t easily denied. A persuasive writer, he first convinces you that Henry Adams’s history has been misread by the few who have read it and reported on it in their own histories. Then he convinces you that as good as The Education of Henry Adams, Democracy, and Mont St. Michel and Chartres are, this earlier work may very well be better. The history, he argues, makes the case that America became a nation, not a ragtaggle of partially settled coastal states, under the Jeffersonians and Adams approves of this. Conventional viewpoints were that Adams wrote to defend his grandfather (JQ) and great-grandfather (John) by disparaging Jefferson and the Republicans but Wills shows the opposite to be true. That not only wasn’t Henry fond of either of his ancestors, politically or personally, he thought Jefferson and Madison, despite their citizen-farmer bias and anti-Federalist views made decisions that put the United States on a path to a strong national government, with a standing army and navy, and westward expansion as a federally supported urge. Wills also, by quoting liberally but not cumbersomely, makes the case that Adams was a gifted stylist. Here he is describing a seemingly inexplicable American perspective on Spanish Florida’s standing…that somehow it was part of the Louisiana Purchase even though we purchased it from France, not Spain. “[Livingston] was forced at last to maintain that Spain had retroceded West Florida to France without knowing it, that France has sold it to the United States without suspecting it, that the United States had bought it without paying for it, and that neither France nor Spain, although the original contracting parties, were competent to decide the meaning of their own contract.” So, I’m buying the Library of America set of these histories. Thank you, Garry Wills, an American master in his own right. He is one of our best popular historians, in the best senses of both the adjective and the noun, and a fine, thoughtful and entertaining writer.

Garry Wills is one of my favorite scholars, as he is well-versed in both American history and in the history of the Catholic Church.

I came across this book because I find the Adams family -- so prominent from the second half of the 18th century until into the 20th century -- and the events of those earlier days of the Republic fascinating.

As I mentioned in my recent review of Henry Adams' weird autobiography that leaves some key things out -- his "The Education of Henry Adams" -- anyone wanting to know more about this truly interesting man would do well to consult the recent biography of Adams by David Brown, "The Last American Aristocrat."

However, this book by Wills comes in, I think, at a close second. While it does not attempt to be a complete biography, in its first half we get a truncated view of Adams' life and career, especially concerning his interests and abilities as an historian. Although he wasn't the first American to attempt a history of the United States, he was one of the very first to employ modern historical methods, including deeply diving in to primary sources for a much fuller understanding of all that was at play at a given time.

The second half of Wills' book, in fact, focuses in depth on what Wills considers Adams' historical masterpiece, the several thousand page multi-volume work "History of the United States of America During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson" (four volumes) and "History of the United States of America During the Administrations of James Madison" (five volumes).

It is because of Wills' high praise of Adams' writing skills and historical narrative ability -- including his painting of unforgettable word portraits of so many key figures in those years -- that I purchased used copies of those histories (thoughtfully compiled by "The Library of America").

Although the great-grandson of the first President Adams, who was a Federalist and who disagreed with Jefferson on a great many things, Henry Adams actually praises the accomplishments -- many of them unintended -- that occurred during Jefferson's and Madison's terms of office as necessary to help the new republic truly become a nation.

I have to say, though, that I found his portrait of Jefferson to be frequently appalling, for I had not previously known how damned devious, even two-faced, Jefferson could be. Like too many of our current politicians, Jefferson, too, frequently portrayed events and persons in stark black/white terms. Also, for all of his political experience and wisdom, he fared ill when attempting "clever" diplomacy in the same arena as the much more experienced foreign ministers of France and Great Britain.

If these histories by Adams interest you at all, I would advise reading Wills' book before purchasing them as it will help you decide whether you wish to invest the considerable time required to plow through them. At some point in the future I will attempt this very thing and, if I live long enough to accomplish it, I will write a separate review of them.

Wills notes, somewhat sadly, that these monumental histories are seldom read anymore. I concur with that fact because even while in graduate school I did not once encounter Adams the historian. (Although it is also true that even if I had, I do not know how I would have carved out the time necessary to plow through so many pages of fairly small print.

I was reading this book in tandem with a biography of Adams's wife, Clover. I disliked the way Garry Wills puffed himself in the opening chapter of this book, even if it was at the expense of long-dead historians. By the time I abandoned the book, I was tired of Wills's parsing of Adams interpretations of the history of the young republic. Also, I felt like I learned more about Henry Adams the man from the life story of the woman who married him and subsequently committed suicide. Wills's book served to remind me, however, of the beauty of Henry Adams's prose, which is something I might want to revisit at a future date. Perhaps I'll read The Education of Henry Adams, his most popular work (though Clover is not mentioned in it).

This was surprisingly readable but I don't recommend picking it up just for fun. The chapters were broken into sections so when I got confused or bored I knew something else more interesting would come soon. That said, this is a VERY meta book with present-day historian Wills writing about ca. 1900 historian Henry Adams writing a history about ca. 1800 presidents with comparisons to other historic historians along the way.