Pete’s Pick
September 2024
John Adams
David McCullough
Biography
Simon & Schuster, 2008
Introduction
This book is a biography of John Adams, one of the Founders of the United States of America, and the fourth President of the United States.
Author
David McCullough is a multi-award-winning author in several genres. He won the Pulitzer Prize for this biography and his biography Truman about President Harry Truman. He has twice been awarded the National Book Award. He has also been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Story
This book is a tremendous review of American history as we approach the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding in 1776. I love history to begin with, but lately have felt like I needed a good refresher on American history. I’ve read several of David McCullough’s books and have loved them. I was recently at the Museum of the American Revolution and was in the shop at the museum and saw this book sitting on one of the books shelves. I didn’t buy it. I chose to check it out of the library when I came home.
The book takes us from John Adam’s early life in Braintree, Massachusetts, his time at Harvard University, and his early career as a lawyer in Boston. We learn of his early love of books and reading which stayed with him his whole life. We start getting into American History when the Boston Massacre happens in March 1770 when a squad of British soldiers fired into a crowd of several hundred colonial Americans who were demonstrating on the streets of Boston. The Massachusetts authorities put the soldiers on trial, but no one was willing to defend them—until John Adams stepped forward. A great believer that all persons deserved defense when charged with a crime, he agreed to defend all nine of the soldiers. And they were acquitted! He won his case!
John Adams became involved in the early discussions about the difficult circumstances the American colonies were experiencing under King George III of Great Britain. As circumstances deteriorated and the great minds of the colonies began to search for how to resist the unfair taxes and oppression of Great Britain, John found himself involved in these conversations. When the colonies decided to create a Congress of the colonies to decide collectively how to respond to King George III, John found himself selected by the Massachusetts colony legislature to be one of their representatives at the Congress.
The book takes us through the discussions that led to the decision to write the Declaration of Independence. We learn of John Adams earliest thinking and writing on the concept of a form of government which featured three separate branches of government with checks and balances to ensure one branch did not overpower the other branches. We are taken through the American Revolution and John Adams role as a diplomat to France, Holland, and ultimately the first U.S.Ambassador to Great Britain. Ultimately, we watch as the Americans win their independence from Great Britain and John Adams becomes the first American Vice President. After George Washington’s two terms as President, John Adams becomes the second U.S. President.
Throughout the book, we are made privy to the great love affair John had with his wife Abigail, and the importance to both of them of family and family relationships. During their lifetimes, the Adams experienced many heartbreaks. But they also saw their oldest son John Quincy grow to become an important diplomat in the U.S foreign service. Ultimately, John Adams got to see his son become the sixth President of the United States.
The book is full of American history and important people from our country’s history. It was refreshing to have all of that brought back to my memory and placed in the context of John Adams’ life. Of particular interest to me was the friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. While there was a 20 year or so period in which Adams and Jefferson were on different sides of the political fence, in the end the friendship carried through in their relationship and they remained friends right up until they both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Evaluation
The book is American history written largely in the context of the life of John Adams. I learned much about Adams I had not been familiar with, or at least had not remembered from my history lessons. I was quite taken back by how important writing was to John Adams. He kept diaries, he wrote down his thoughts about life in the form of pamphlets or little books, and he wrote and he wrote and he wrote letters. To everyone! And he loved receiving letters. At the end of this book, David McCullough says he discovered that over their lives, John and Abigail wrote over a thousand letters to themselves! In many ways, I object to the ways in which computers and the internet have changed our traditions of writing letters. While theoretically what we say via email and Facebook and Instagram are capturable for posterity, I don’t believe it carries the same quality of expression that letter writing did in its day. I was amazed at the number of people John Adams kept up with over his 90 years of life through his letter writing.
If you love history, this book is full of it. If you love people, this book if full of them. If you like politics, this book is full of it. I highly recommend this book as preparation for our 250th birthday of a nation in two years.