Description
Book SynopsisIn this concise biography, Parsons masterfully chronicles the dramatic and prolific career of one of America's most absorbing figures.
Trade ReviewJohn Quincy Adams is a beautifully written, well-balanced, and remarkably complete biography of Adams. Its lively account of his long career as diplomat, senator, president, and congressman, and as scholar, poet, and patron of science should make clear to every American his prominent and then commanding role in the first seven decades of this nation's life. Parsons' book should immediately take its place as the best one-volume biography of this great American. -- Richard Alan Ryerson, editor in chief, The Adams Papers
Lynn Parsons has ventured into the daunting record left by John Quincy Adams and reproduced a remarkable portrait of Adams and his times. Thorough, fair, and authentic, this full-scale biography is written with grace and clarity. It is as engaging to read as it is useful and provocative. -- Edith Gelles, author of Portia: The World of Abigail Adams
John Quincy Adams continues to be ranked as our greatest of all secretaries of state, and Lynn Hudson Parsons has given us a superb, succinct, engagingly written biography that not only tells us about this incredible person, but about his America as it became modernized politically and economically—and as it, and he, became increasingly haunted by the specter of slavery. -- Walter LaFeber
Lynn H. Parsons, who has been working on Adams for many years, provides a very readable general biography. -- Richard Samuelson * Claremont Review of Books *
A beautifully written, well-balanced, and complete biography. -- Richard Alan Ryerson, editor-in-chief, The Adams Papers
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Illustrations Chapter 2 Editor's Foreword Chapter 3 Acknowledgments Chapter 4 Prologue Chapter 5 "Times in Which a Genious Would Wish to Live" Chapter 6 "To Serve My Country at its Call" Chapter 7 "Hitherto My Conduct has Given Satisfaction to Neither Side" Chapter 8 "A Bulldog Among Spaniels" Chapter 9 "Leave the Rest of the Continent to Us" Chapter 10 "Liberty is Power" Chapter 11 "I Was Born for a Controversial World. . . ." Chapter 12 "A Stout Heart and a Clear Conscience, and Never Despair" Chapter 13 Epilogue Chapter 14 Suggested Reading Chapter 15 Index
