Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
- Book Review,
by Joseph J. Ellis
From Publishers Weekly
Decreeing our second president the "most misconstrued and underappreciated 'great man' in American history," Ellis, a history professor at Mount Holyoke College, sets out to recover the Adams legacy obscured by the "triumph of liberalism." His notable study focuses on Adams (1735-1826) in retirement in Quincy, Mass., starting in 1801. Drawing on Adams's correspondence, his journalism and his marginalia in the books he read, Ellis shows the one-term president during his first 12 years of private life fulminating over the country's direction, then mellowing. But Adams would remain oppositional and tart: "Was there ever a Coup de Theatre that had so great an effect as Jefferson's penmanship of the Declaration of Independence?" Ellis argues that Adams, incapable of political self-protection and with an insufferable personal integrity, internalized what he viewed as the nation's failings--ambition, lust for distinction, etc.--and struggled to keep a check on such qualities within himself. He and Jefferson differed fundamentally on the meaning of the American Revolution; their disagreement, according to Ellis, was not about means but about ends: Jefferson made "a religion of the people," Adams proposed that democratization should be evolutionary. Photos. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Of all the brilliant cast of characters who brought the United States into being, none is more noteworthy or more controversial than John Adams. In this biography, Ellis (history, Mount Holyoke) focuses on the last part of Adams's life in an attempt to dissect and illuminate the contradictory nature of this great man. In this detailed yet readable account, the reader is told that "Adams did not just read books. He battled them." One of his favorite authors was Bolingbroke, but he considered Voltaire a "liar." A man like Adams is heard loudly through the centuries; collections of his letters will always be invaluable, but Ellis's work is an appropriate and well-researched adjunct to the original sources. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.- Katherine Gillen, Mesa P.L., Ariz.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
In a meditative and discursive essay (mostly about its subject's long retirement), Ellis (History/Mount Holyoke; After the Revolution, 1979) ponders the distinctive personality and achievements of America's endearingly cantankerous second President. While generally accorded a distinguished place in the pantheon of the nation's founders, John Adams has never been credited with the intellect of a Jefferson or the heroism of a Washington, and his presidency usually has been deemed an honorable failure. Ellis views this as unjust but points out a possible reason: Adams's pragmatic and pessimistic philosophy (emphasizing the limitations of America and the importance of tempering freedom with responsibility) was less moving than the idealistic, celebratory outlook of Jefferson and less appropriate to a young nation about to conquer a continent. Adams's rhetoric, moreover--at best plain and uninspired and at worst vituperatively argumentative--suffers in comparison with Jefferson's majestic prose. Ellis nonetheless makes clear that Adams has much to teach modern America, which has discovered limits to its power and is beginning to doubt the myths of American exceptionalism. The author's vivid sketch of the famous Adams-Jefferson correspondence shows his subject's delightful personality, intellect, warmth, and capacity for friendship, as well as his devotion to the Union and to the Federalist cause (which came to an end with the New England Federalists' support for secession during the War of 1812). Ellis comments ruefully on what he views as Adams's unfair relegation to second place in America's memory of its founders (a ranking that Adams himself anticipated), and he proposes that a statue of Adams be erected near the Jefferson Memorial so that, ``depending on the time of day and angle of the sun, he and Jefferson might take turns casting shadows across each other's facades.'' By focusing on Adams's retirement, Ellis doesn't achieve the sweep of a full biography--but he's able to capture the man's appealing spirit, providing new perspective on an unfairly neglected Founding Father. (Photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review
His best book. . . . Ellis's knack for bringing historical figures to life seems to natural you can't imagine him doing anything else.
Book Description
A fresh look at this astute, likably quirky statesman, by the author of the Pulitzer Award-winning Founding Brothers. "The most lovable and most laughable, the warmest and possibly the wisest of the founding fathers, John Adams knew himself as few men do and preserved his knowledge in a voluminous correspondence that still resonates. Ellis has used it with great skill and perception not only to bring us the man, warts and all, but more importantly to reveal his extraordinary insights into the problems confronting the founders that resonate today in the republic they created."151;Edmund S. Morgan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University.
About the Author
Joseph J. Ellis is Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke. He is the author of the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.
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