John Quincy Adams

Ready to study the U.S. Presidents in a fun, hands-on way? This Lapbook includes a Study Guide that will provide you with all you need for an overview of this President's life and presidency. This product works well for 2nd grade through high school by adding research for the high school student. All templates and instructions included.

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.

21 essential works trace a great statesman’s lifelong engagement with the promise of America and the legacy of the Founding Fathers

"Few presidents ever thought about words as carefully as John Quincy Adams. Thankfully, we can now hear his words again, in this instantly essential volume."—Ted Widmer, historian and former presidential speechwriter

John Quincy Adams was one of the most accomplished American statesmen of his or any era. He brought all his eloquence, erudition, and fierce energy to bear on the politics of the nation over the course of a remarkable career that spanned from the founding era to the sectional crisis that preceded the Civil War.

Despite a persistent interest in this pivotal figure, there has never been a single-volume collection of Adams’s essential political writings, until now. Here, for the first time in an edition for general readers and students alike, are the profound insights of a far-seeing political leader who was also a consummate American stylist. 

From his prophetic college commencement address in 1787 to his vigorous denunciation of slavery in 1843, this Library of America volume offers a compact and compelling record of America's fractious evolution as a democratic republic, presenting some of the most important political writings in our history.

These writings are more urgently needed than ever. In the words of biographer Fred Kaplan: "His values, his definition of leadership, and his vision for the nation’s future—particularly the difficulty of transforming vision into reality in a country that often appears ungovernable—are as much about twenty-first century America as about Adams’ life and times."

John Quincy and Louisa Adams’s unexpected journey that changed everything.

American Phoenix is the sweeping, riveting tale of a grand historic adventure across forbidding oceans and frozen tundra—from the bustling ports and towering birches of Boston to the remote reaches of pre-Soviet Russia, from an exile in arctic St. Petersburg to resurrection and reunion among the gardens of Paris. Upon these varied landscapes this Adams and his Eve must find a way to transform their banishment into America’s salvation.

Author, historian, and national media commentator Jane Hampton Cook breathes life into once-obscure history, weaving a meticulously researched biographical tapestry that reads like a gripping novel. With the arc and intrigue of Shakespearean drama in a Jane Austen era, American Phoenix is a timely yet timeless addition to the recent renaissance of works on the founding Adams family, from patriarchs John and Abigail to the second-generation of John Quincy and Louisa and beyond.

Cook has crafted not only a riveting narrative but also an easy-to-understand history filled with fly-on-the-wall vignettes from 1812 and its hardscrabble, freedom-hungry people. While unveiling vivid portrayals of each character—a colorful assortment of heroes and villains, patriots and pirates, rogues and rabble-rousers—she paints equally fresh, intimate portraits of both John Quincy and Louisa Adams. Cook artfully reveals John Quincy’s devastation after losing the job of his dreams, battle for America’s need to thrive economically, and sojourn to secure his homeland’s survival as a sovereign nation. She reserves her most detailed brushstrokes for the inner struggles of Louisa, using this quietly inspirational woman’s own words to amplify her fears, faith, and fortitude along a deeply personal, often heart-rending journey. Cook’s close-up perspective shows how this American couple’s Russian destination changed US destiny.