Social Scientists & Scholars, United States History - 19th Century - General & Miscellaneous, Executive Branch, United States History - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. - Political Biography, Historical Biography - United States, Historiography, United State

America's First Dynasty

Name: America's First Dynasty
Author: Richard Brookhiser
ISBN: 9780786242856

by Richard Brookhiser

Write a review

Overview

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.

About the Author, Richard Brookhiser

Richard Brookhiser is the author of Alexander Hamilton, American (1999), Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (1995), and The Way of the WASP (1991), all published by The Free Press. He is a Senior Editor at The National Review and a New York Observer columnist. He contributes to such publications as American Heritage and The New York Times. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Long before the Bushes, there was another political family "dynasty": the Adamses. Richard Brookhiser, who has written acclaimed biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, brings the reader this look at the family that influenced American politics for almost 200 years. From presidents John and John Quincy all the way to scholar and journalist Henry, this was a family of long-lasting greatness.

Publishers Weekly

"The Adams family saga satisfies our curiosity about famous figures, which is part gossip a venerable genre, from Suetonius to People part identification," writes Brookhiser in his introduction to this quartet of lively profiles of four generations of Adamses: John, the second president; his son, John Quincy, the sixth president; the latter's son, Charles Francis, diplomat and antislavery advocate; and Charles's son, historian and memoirist Henry. Brookhiser, senior editor at the National Review, deviates from the tone of his recent hagiographic works on Washington and Hamilton and presents us with quirky, often unflattering miniatures. Piecing together bits from a wide variety of letters, histories, autobiographies, speeches and legal documents, Brookhiser creates vivid, often disconcerting portraits. Reaaders see Abigail chiding husband John to "remember the ladies," but also his arguing in favor of an "aristocracy of birth"; John Quincy's powerful arguments in the Amistad case turn out to be superfluous to his winning the case. Brookhiser appears to have a love/hate relationship with his subjects. While the first three men are implicitly criticized for seeking power, Henry Adams's later prose style is described as having "the arsenic whiff of unrelieved irony, the by-product of forswearing power." There are wonderful details here John and son John Quincy reading Plutarch to each other over the breakfast table but curious lapses such as a lack of interest in the suicide of Henry's wife, Clover. All too often, however, Brookhiser's conservative politics (so evident in his 1991 The Way of the WASP) color the text: James Buchanan is described as a "gracious, gutless homosexual whoselame-duck cabinet was filled with traitors," and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's complicated race politics are ridiculed. While entertaining, Brookhiser's book feels a little thin, more of a footnote to David McCullough's richly admired biography of John Adams than an important work on its own. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Although American democracy has an important egalitarian element, families that wield national political or social influence for generations (e.g., the Rockefellers and the Roosevelts) remain significant. Among them is the Adams family, which had a significant impact on American politics, journalism, and literature for four generations, from the 1770s to immediately after World War I. A senior editor at the National Review and author of biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, Brookhiser offers a political biography detailing the Adamses' attempts to achieve greatness on both the domestic and the international stage. In this analysis, each generation is represented by one family member: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, and Henry Adams. Brookhiser views Adams family members "as figures in the theatre of history," and he treats them in a balanced fashion, offering both praise and criticism. Providing new insights into the development of American political and social ideas, this family biography will benefit readers interested in these ideas and the recent outpouring of literature concerning the Adamses. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A concise history of four famous men from the house of Adams. John (1735-1826), John Quincy (1767-1848), Charles Francis (1807-86), and Henry (1838-1918) were a prickly bunch who always maintained their sense of self-importance, even after they failed to realize their goals and the family started its long slump into obscurity. Their other shared trait, after all, was contrariness. John was in favor of a kingly presidency, but he despaired of George Washington's regal air even as he sought but failed to acquire it. Historian and journalist Brookhiser (Alexander Hamilton, American, 1999, etc.) calls John the first loser in American presidential history, alienating so many during his single term that he couldn't get re-elected. John Quincy was a strident enemy of slavery not because he wanted to free slaves but because he believed that their masters wanted to lord it over free men as well. Charles Francis despised partisanship, yet he would have gotten nowhere if he hadn't hooked up with William Seward, who as Secretary of State made him ambassador to England. And Henry, who found post-Civil War politics vulgar, nonetheless moved to Washington and became a political journalist. Brookhiser, an admirer of WASP culture, is fascinated by the Adamses' tendency to play out in the public arena exploits that were really directed toward family members. John wanted to impress Samuel Adams. John Quincy had to impress his father. The work Charles Francis most appreciated was the editing of his father's diaries. And Henry could breathe a sigh of relief only after he wrote "Mont Saint Michel and Chartres" as a testament to his family's genius. One wishes that the female members of the tribe had receivedsome attention here. They must have been impressive characters, or no Adams would have married them in the first place. Brookhiser elegantly undermines his subjects even as he sympathetically records their importance as a crucial link between Americans of several generations and their national past.