America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918

by Richard Brookhiser

Book Overview

In the spirit of his earlier books, Alexander Hamilton: American and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Richard Brookhiser produces an elegant, concise volume drawing on previous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684868814
• ISBN13: 9780684868813
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Interestin History of famous family.

"America` First Dynasty" by Richard Brookhiser. Sub-titled: "The Adamses, 1713-1918". Understandably, this book concentrates on the two presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Their contributions as one-term presidents help to establish democracy in the nascent United States. Brookhiser notes that the two Adamses were the first presidents not from Virginia. Much of what John Adams did became precedents for later presidents. It appears to me that the author makes the tacit assumption that the reader has a fairly good knowledge of American history, so he casually introduces lesser know subjects, such as the "Know Nothing Party " (Native American Party) and the anti-Masonic efforts in upstate New York. This, of course, leads you to things that you want to examine further, but, on the other hand, inhibits the free-flow of the book. I think that the author is stretching to consider Charles Francis or even Henry Adams as "greats" who were continuing the Adams "dynasty". I did, however, enjoy Brookhiser's "book review" approach to "The Education of Henry Adams" and Henry's book on Mont St. Michel. Perhaps the next book by Brookhiser would be the comparison of the contributions of the Adamses, the Harrisons, the Roosevelts and the Bushes: all presidents who related by blood.I listened to the seven tapes as I commuted around Boston; excellent reading by Dan Cashman. It is appropriate to note the name of the town of Haverhill is pronounced as HAV AAAA rill by the natives.. The reader sounded it out and said Have Er Hill, which is logical but not the way it is said in Massachusetts. Further, the hometown of the Adamses , Quincy, is said as "QuinZZZy".

American history through the eyes of one family

When reading "America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918" one reads the sweep of 150 years of American history through the eyes of America's first dynastic family. The Adamses, their quarrels, their prejudices, and their crazy ideas, (John Adams thought the new nation would soon turn to a hereditary monarchy), are put into the context of the times for the modern reader to absorb. The result is a remarkably readable book sized for today's attention span.In the section on Henry Adams, the writer, historian and great grandson of John Adams, our second President, we get a glimpse of the perspective that being an heir to history can bestow on someone willing to accept it when Richard Brookhiser writes about Adams' book "History of the United States in the Administration of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison." The following excerpt includes portions of "History..." as well as Brookhiser's own synopsis of the book. "America invited men to partake of a national wealth that was as yet mostly uncreated; the openness of the offer tapped reservoirs of energy and devotion. `The poor came, and from them were seldom heard complaints of deception or delusion. Within a moment, by the mere contact of a moral atmosphere, they saw... the summer cornfields and the glowing continent.' America's natural resources were not gold or coal, but opportunity and the people the opportunity attracted."Brookhiser has written a fine book. I am now compelled to read his other works.

How Generations in a Family Help Each Other

Brookhiser's broad brush paints four generations of a family where some were successful and others not so successful. It is a template for others who would set out the stories of their families to follow. He also gives a good overview of American history for the period. It is also an excellent account of the female side of the family, including daughters, nieces, and friends. I recommend the book.

A family contract

Richard Brookhiser doesn't write 'biographies' in the conventional sense -- and certainly not in the modern sense, in which writers seem determined to prove that once-admired historical figures are just as messed up as the rest of us, and probably even worse. No, what Brookhiser attempts to do (as I believe he noted in 'Founding Father,' his book about George Washington) is reclaim the ancient idea of biography as a means of understanding and exploring ideas about civic virtue, citizenship, and (dare we say?) morals.This isn't to say that Brookhiser whitewashes his subjects. Far from it: his subjects come through in this book both as sharply defined individuals and as members of a family with a very clear sense of itself and its place in history. That he chooses not to bog himself down in domestic minutia doesn't detract from the quality of the biography, and enhances the points he's trying to make.If this book were a novel, cover blurbs would breathlessly proclaim it 'the sweeping saga of an American family across four tempestuous generations.' And the description wouldn't be far wrong. From the time of the Founding until the First World War, the Adams family was (to varying degrees at various times, but always to some extent) among the most prominent, influential, respected, and reviled families in America. Brookhiser does a fine job showing how four individual members of this family bore that inheritance, and shaped, and were shaped by, what it meant to be an Adams. If 'the contract of the [American] founding ... was a contract with their family' (p. 199), the family had contractual obligations in return. Many Adamses chose not to fulfill those 'obligations.' But the four who most notably did, did so with one eye on their times and the other on their patrimony.The four biographies are fascinating in their own rights. But the section of the book I most enjoyed was the final four chapters, in which Brookhiser weighs one Adams against another and against some of the perennial questions of American civic life -- most notably the question of Republic versus Empire. It's here, especially, that Brookhiser shows how the lessons of the Adams dynasty apply to our own times as well as theirs.The most obvious appeal of 'America's First Dynasty' is to students of political history. But it also bears reading for the light it shines on current political, constitutional, and cultural questions, and for the recurring dilemma of the family in American political life. For if the supermarket tabloids still label a certain other political/media clan as 'America's royal family,' it's worth remembering that they're not the first nor, by any stretch, the most important. This book is definitely worth a read.

Dynasty and Melancholy

An interesting and nicely readable survey of four generations of one of America's founding families. Brookhiser's book doesn't have the detail of McCollough's recent biography on Adams (this isn't a complaint, by the way!). Instead, it traces family traits and dispositions through their historical and psychological course over a period of 150 years or so. Each one of the mini-biographies of the four Adamses Brookhiser discusses--John, John Quincy, Charles, and Henry--are fascinating in themselves. But what I think is especially valuable is the thread of melancholy that seems to run through the Adams lineage, a thread Brookhiser paints with innuendo rather than bold stroke. John's ambition and frustrated pride, John Quincy's self-punishing advocacy of unpopular causes, Charles' heart-breaking need to establish a postmortem relationship with his father by editing John Quincy's multi-volumed diary, Henry's world-weariness that expresses itself in his cleverly cynical autobiography or his romantic nostalgia for a medieval period that really never was: each of the Adamses suffers from and copes with a dark side in his own way. The darkness is what makes them all so incredibly intriguing and, combined with a New England work ethic, creates a restlessness in them that probably fuels their success.Two bonuses in the book: first, provocative insights one picks up about the Adamses (for example, Charles's aristocratic, stiff-upper-lip handling of his own increasing dotage in his last years--how Adams-like; or Henry's refusal to mourn the beloved wife who killed herself--again, only an Adams could put on such a public front); second, the book's topic invites us to ask ourselves why it is that we Americans, who supposedly deplore aristocracy out of a loyalty to our democratic traditions, so enjoy and protect our homegrown dynasties. The Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Bushes--we either love 'em or love to hate 'em. A good question to ask ourselves is "why?".