John Adams by John Patrick Diggins

   Until I read John Adams I didn't know just how much I idealized the time of America's founding. I saw everyone on the same page, thinking along the same lines; ready to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. I knew there were differences, but I thought they existed more between the Tories and Whigs. I enjoyed this biography for the insight into the time and for opening my eyes to the realities that people are people; a perspective I usually am pretty good at keeping, but, for some reason, I neglected to a fault.
   I learned that I "personally" like John Adams more than Thomas Jefferson. John Adams was smart and insightful and, at times, puzzlingly shortsighted. He loved his wife. I learned that President Adams was a real person who would probably recoil from the celebrity with which he is currently held.
   John Patrick Diggins' book is a short 175 pages that most likely hit the main points and leaves the minutia for a longer treatise. Diggins still does a good job of painting a picture, though whether the picture is more of Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, I'm not quite sure.

Favorite Quotes:

"Ben Franklin described Adams as "always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in somethings, absolutely out of his Senses."

"His father...wanted his son to study Latin...When he protested that he hated the subject, his father replied: 'Well, John, if Latin-grammar does not suit you, you may try ditching, perhaps that will...' Young John looked forward to the "delightful change," only to discover after a day and a half of hard, backbreaking work that he preferred Latin to labor. Finally at nightfall 'toil conquered pride, and I told my father, one of the severest trials of my life, that, if he chose, I would go back to Latin-grammar. He was glad of it; and if I have since gained any distinction, it has been owing to the two days' labor in that abominable ditch.'"

"The great sin, announced Adams the Puritan, is passivity and complacency. "Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.'"

"Years earlier they (Adams and Benjamin Franklin) slept in the same room, and when Adams closed the windows tight before turning in, he would awake shivering to find that Franklin had opened them wide and, instead of allowing Adams to get back to sleep, Franklin would give him a lecture on the virtues of fresh air."

"Party politics in America begins in bravado and ends in bathos, an electoral campaign that promises a climactic resolution and succumbs to the ordinary trivia of everyday politics."

"'Why, he (Adams) asked, 'are the personal accomplishments of  beauty, elegance, and grace, held in such esteem by mankind? Is it merely from the pleasure which is received from the sight of these attributes? By no means. The taste for such delicacies is not universal; in those who feel the most lively sense of them, it is but a slight sensation, and of the shortest continuance; but those attractions command the notice and attention of the public; they draw the eyes of the spectators.'"

Overall Opinion:

A good introduction to John Adams; leaves me definitely wanting to learn more.

Rating:

7


Links to: Dearest Friend A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey