America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 - eBook
Stock No: WW9088EB
America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 - eBook  -     By: Richard Brookhiser

America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 - eBook

Free Press / 2002 / ePub

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Stock No: WW9088EB

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Free Press / 2002 / ePub
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Product Information

Title: America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 - eBook
By: Richard Brookhiser
Format: DRM Protected ePub
Vendor: Free Press
Publication Date: 2002
ISBN: 9780743242097
ISBN-13: 9780743242097
Stock No: WW9088EB

Publisher's Description

Richard Brookhiser has won a wide and loyal following for his stylish, pointed, and elegant biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In America's First Dynasty, Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still greatest dynasty -- the Adamses, the only family in our history to play a leading role in American affairs for nearly two centuries. From John, the self-made, tough-minded lawyer who rose to the highest office in the government he helped create; to John Quincy, the child prodigy who grew up amid foreign royalty, followed his father to the White House, and later reinvented himself as a champion of liberty in Congress; to politician and writer Charles Francis, the only well-balanced Adams; to Henry, brilliant scholar and journalist -- the Adamses achieved longer-lasting greatness than any other American family.
Brookhiser's canvass starts in colonial America, when John Adams had to teach himself the law and ride on horseback for miles to find clients. It does not end until after the Titanic sinks -- Henry had booked a room but changed his plans -- and World War I begins, with Henry near the action in France. The story of this single family offers a short course in the nation's history, because for nearly two hundred years Adams history was American history. The Adamses were accompanied by an impressive cast of characters, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, to Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, to Teddy Roosevelt. America's First Dynasty offers telling portraits of the great men of our past, and many of the women around them. John and Abigail's great love affair was destined to be repeated by their offspring and offspring's offspring.
As with any family, there was a darker side to the Adams story: many of its members were abject failures. Alcoholism was a familiar specter, and suicide was not unknown. Only one of the four great Adamses was a kind man and father; the others set standards so impossibly high that few of their children could meet them. Yet despite more than a century of difference from John to Henry, certain Adams traits remained the same. In the story of our first and still-greatest family, we can all see something of our own struggles with family, fate, and history.

Editorial Reviews

George H. W. Bush There are two words I have come to dislike when they are applied to my family: dynasty and legacy. But the history of the Adams family, America's First Dynasty, is a marvelous personal glimpse at one of America's truly great families, and everybody should read this new book by Richard Brookhiser.
George F. Will Tired of bloated biographies that are larger than their subjects? Weary of "pathographies" -- biographies that present historic figures as the sums of their defects? Discover the slender, elegant appreciations -- which is what they are -- written by Richard Brookhiser about great American lives. Having done justice to George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, he now does the same for the Adamses. It is another delight.
H. W. Brands author of The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin What is the role of family in democratic politics? What should the role be? With the verve and acuteness his readers have come to expect, Richard Brookhiser once again instructs the present with moral lessons from the past. The Adamses have never been more timely, nor their story better told.

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