John Adams by David McCullough Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.52 You Save: $11.48 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.06 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of John Adams
Book Review: Should be mandatory High School reading
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't like to just run with the crowd, but for this book I have to agree with all the 5 stars. I'm a slow reader, and it took me all last summer to finish it, but picking up that book for a few hours everyday was the sweetest part of my day. I hated for it to end! All the real sacrifice and hard work to cobble together a new country and government, all the blood, sweat, tears, terror, joys, and hopes for the future just drench every page. When I went to see the Portrait Gallery in Philadelphia and stood in the room where all the real live characters in the book argued and debated as to how to make it all work as best as humans could make a government, I nearly wept. John Adams and the rest of the country worried about almost exactly the same things as we do today...terrorists, free trade, federal debt, race relations, etc, etc. They worried about future generations...yes, they worried about us! David Mccullough and his staff bring everything together so beautifully. And, by the way, the HBO series is also absolutely suberb!!Book Review: The Overlooked Adams
Summary: 5 Stars
kudos for David McCollough, once again, in writing an interesting and certainly revealing book about one of the most disparaged of our founding fathers.
This biography sets the record straight about John Adam's integrity, ingenuity, and genius. He rightly has been credited as the man who saved the constitution. He did make some mistakes later on, but they didn't have modern political analysts to help steer them clear of political land mines back then.
Read it twice, and going to do it again. Its that good.
Would that every scholar could research and honestly write as David McCullough. That's the highest praise I can think of.
Book Review: Unsung American Hero Gets His Due
Summary: 5 Stars
I am compelled after reading and re-reading this magnificent biography to write that any person wishing to avail themselves of America's second president must read this book. America's often-overlooked and criticized second president emerges here in full and beautiful form. McCullough does justice to Adams with his assiduous effort and sends the dust of history flying with this lively, engrossing biography of a man often misunderstood.
The times in which Adams lived and his contributions to the infant America at home and abroad against the backdrop of some of the most exciting, thrilling events in America's history are nothing short of amazing; Adams' administration was about more than the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Anti-Federalist response, i.e. the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which brought to the fore the doctrines of nullification and interposition.
Throughout his work, McCullough shows the reader what can arguably be considered the finest rendering of this humble hero, the dilligent if testy New Englander whose personal integrity, ethics and experience drove him to champion the goals he believed in, and fulfill, to the best of his ability, his duties as he understood them: Though a federalist like first President George Washington, the old general was a tough act follow and Adams, while as committed as any Founder, simply lacked the charisma of his predecessor and successor. His certitude and apparent unwillingness to compromise often worked against him.
Nonetheless, it is almost impossible to come away from this book without a great respect and admiration for Adams, a man who, in all seasons (and not always with success or the greatest circumspection) tried so hard to do what he thought was right.
McCullough's inclusion of the correspondence between Adams and Jefferson in their later years and his presentation of the circumstances surrounding that correspondence, the issues raised, show Adams to be every bit the luminary and sage Jefferson was, if in his own contentious way.
This is, among other things, the story of an honest man who was not afraid to speak his mind and, perhaps most importantly, was honest with himself. Here's to John Adams, rendered by McCullough: An honest man working hard in extraordinary times! Would that there were more men like Adams and his contemporaries today.
Book Review: this belongs on every americans bookshelf
Summary: 5 Stars
If you a) like a good read, b) love history the way it should be written,c) all of the above, read this book. It tells the story of how the People who started our country felt, the living, breathing, people, who were just as confused about life as we are, but they knew one thing, something had to change, and they had to do it. I know why this book got the Pulitzer prize, and it should be on the required reading list of every college.David McCullough got it right, and then some.