Description
Book SynopsisOvershadowed by both his brilliant father and the brash and bold Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams has long been dismissed as an aloof intellectual. Viciously assailed by Jackson and his populist mobs for being both slippery and effete, Adams nevertheless recovered from defeat in 1828’s presidential election to lead the nation as a lonely Massachusetts congressman in the fight against slavery. Award-winning historian William J. Cooper’s “balanced, wellsourced, and accessible work” (
Publishers Weekly) demonstrates that Adams should be considered our lost Founding Father, his moral and political vision the final link to the visionaries who created our nation. With his heroic arguments in the Amistad trial forever memorialized, Adams stood strong against the expansion of slavery that would send the nation hurtling into war. This “well-crafted” (William McFeely) biography reveals Adams to be one of the most battered, but courageous and inspirational, politicians in American history.
Trade Review"In this illuminating new look at John Quincy Adams, the distinguished historian William J. Cooper gives us a vivid and convincing account of one of the most significant—but too often overlooked—figures in our history. Long obscured by the towering shadow of his father’s generation on one side and by Andrew Jackson on the other, our sixth president merits more study and credit. In these pages, Cooper gives him both." -- Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
"There is a certain urgency to new studies of presidents of the republic. William Cooper’s well-crafted life of John Quincy Adams, a learned and well-trained president with a conscience touching the moral questions of his day, admirably fits that bill." -- William McFeely, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Grant: A Biography
"John Quincy Adams was a world traveler and full-throated nationalist, primed from youth for a life in politics. His path to success was marred by a cold, forbidding character that he could not shake.
The Lost Founding Father is as nimble and inviting to readers as its subject was dense and ill-disposed to company." -- Andrew Burstein, author of Jefferson’s Secrets and The Passions of Andrew Jackson
"As he did in his prize-winning biography of Jefferson Davis, William J. Cooper here brilliantly balances a perceptive portrait of John Quincy Adams’s personal life and character…with an astute and compelling analysis of his decades-long public career. The result is another first-class performance." -- Michael Holt, author of The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party
"Cooper’s balanced, well-sourced, and accessible work focuses on a rarely examined yet pivotal period in American history." -- Publisher's Weekly
