Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Biographies are difficult to write. A biographer seldom approaches the subject with a clean slate. Many (most?) presidential biographers approach the subject from a historical or political perspective and emphasize events or societal currents, sometimes to the detriment of the subject of the biography. In the case of this biography, we have a retired English professor writing a biography of an extremely prolific political figure who had real literary talent. The focus of this work is clearly on the person and writings of Adams rather than other aspects of his life. And yet, even accepting this prospective bias, I am left unsatisfied by this work. On the positive side, it is an exhaustive study of John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, 17-year Congressman, Senator, Secretary of State, professor, author, diarist (50 volumes!), and anti-slavery advocate. His is a remarkable story, and the author tells it in great detail, relying on correspondence and journals to provide a first-hand account of many incidents in Adams' life. That being noted, I found this book to be very tiresome, oddly organized, and lacking in historical and political context. For example, the author spends over 100 pages on the childhood and education of Adams but less than 40 on his presidency. What many authorities consider to be Adams' most significant period, his time in Congress, receives only a bit more coverage than childhood and early legal career. The author mentions significant historical events, e.g., the XYZ affair on page 156, without previous explanation. Elsewhere, the author begins to discuss a topic but leaves off without completing the discussion or explaining the significance of the matters mentioned. For example, the author mentions that Adams sent dozens of letters home from his travels in Silesia and was open to the possibility of their publication, and yet no mention is made of their ultimate publication in a 387-page book titled "Letters on Silesia" by a London publisher. The whole episode in Prussia and the travels in Silesia is given quite extended treatment in a chapter almost as long as the chapter on Adams as president, while Unger - another Adams biographer - considers this period in a chapter of just 15 pages, a much more appropriate allocation of space and effort. At various points in this otherwise literary-focused biography, there are interesting insinuations of political insight that attempt to co-opt Adams' legacy for progressive politics, notwithstanding the popular and long-standing view that Adams is properly considered a moderate conservative (even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a very progressive scholar, put Adams in that part of the political spectrum). At one point, the author describes Adams' political legacy as "land-grant universities, the Panama Canal, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Federal Reserve, and the Interstate Highway System," and the back cover of the book links Adams to "FDR and Obama." Suffice it to say that the book did not persuade me that the Adams lineage extended quite so far in that direction, and further elaboration (in an already overlong book) would have been necessary to properly substantiate such an assertion. A biographer must sift the sources and make assessments of the relative weight of various segments of the subject's life. These tasks are especially important when dealing with someone whose personal diaries extend to 50 volumes, for whom there are many public records and speeches, and who has been the subject of many other biographies. This book would have benefited from a heavy and objective editing, and, absent such, I cannot recommend this book to any but fans of the author or enthusiasts of Adams for whom less lengthy - and more effective - biographies do not suffice.