"John Adams" book review

Last year, on my summer vacation I read “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” by Joseph Ellis. It was a biography of the “Sage of Monticello” that dissected not so much the politics or history of the man but his seemingly bipolar personality. It discussed at length how often he would say one thing and then do another as it suited his purposes. And while the book went forward at a good clip and was insightful and entertaining, the more I read the less I cared for Jefferson and the more I came to like his friend and sometimes political rival John Adams.

That’s why a month ago I picked up a copy of “John Adams” by David McCullough. It is a monster biography (Over 600 pages) that covers Adams’ life from cradle to grave by using personal papers and letters written by Adams, his wife Abigail, their children, friends and relatives. Through McCullough’s work I found that John Adams was a giant of the revolutionary age who did so much in service of his country and was so prolific in his writings both personal and public that a couple of hundred pages could NEVER contain him.

Yet, despite the prolific nature of the man and his family, Adams is one of those figures who get glossed over in history class. Very little attention is paid to him in textbooks. They might say he was a signer of the declaration. They might say he was President for a while. But other than that, Adams is a largely forgotten figure of history for the average student. In fact, even after having grown up in his home state of Massachusetts’, I knew very little about him. I am ashamed to admit that a lot of what I knew was gained in a classroom viewing of “1776: The Musical” in Miss Olsen’s 8th Grade History class in Billerica, MA. (I’m not kidding.)

This book gave me an acute lesson in Adams that was fascinating. There are so many things I didn’t know about the man as to be laughable. I didn’t know he was the lawyer who defended the British Soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre. I didn’t know it was Adams who got the funding and oversaw the building of our first Navy. I didn’t know that after being an ambassador to France, he left on his own (that is without approval of congress) and went to Holland to secure much needed loans from the Dutch. I didn’t know that after the war he had been minister to the court of St. James (England) even after having been marked for hanging during the revolution. There were many surprising turns of events in Adams’ life that while wholly remarkable and noteworthy are nonetheless seldom studied by the average survey of American History classes.

But the real surprise in the book was his wife, Abigail Adams.

I had never thought or heard much about Abigail Adams. In a sense, I knew they were a power couple (I got that from the musical). What I did not know was in how many ways and on how many topics Abigail was the perfect complement to John himself. In a time when women were largely overlooked by society, she carried on the business of the household while John spent his time away on the nation’s business. And when she went to Europe during John’s ambassadorships, her keen insights on people and steadying influence on his humor helped John accomplish great things for the fledgling United States. All through their life together she was an island of tranquility in the chaotic seas of early American independence.

And she was no less prolific a writer than John and in some ways more valuable. All through the book, in quotations pulled from the myriad letters McCullough used for research, Abigail offered the most insight into John and the American people’s states of mind in ways that her husband could not. An astute observer, opinionated, pioneering, well read, well mannered, steadfast, and hearty Abigail maintained relationships with her husband, siblings, parents and children for many years with a prolific outpouring of letters to all of them. And as if that weren’t enough she corresponded with several of the prominent names of history including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush. In short, Abigail Adams was a remarkable woman who deserves much more acknowledgement than she has received over the years.

I won’t bore you further with my version of the details of the Adams’ life. McCullough does a much better job than I ever could of revealing who they were. And that’s part of the reason this book won the Pulitzer Prize. McCullough has an easy way with words while being thorough in detail, a combination of traits that historical writers seldom seem to have. His writing is easy going almost to the point of being conversational in tone and conveys the mood of the situation about which he is writing better than any current writer (non-fiction or fiction) that I can name.

I very much liked this book and recommend it to anyone looking to gain insight into this country’s founding, one of our greatest founding fathers or just daily life in that period of history.

5 Stars out of 5.