The Education of John Adams

Name: The Education of John Adams
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: R.B. Bernstein
ISBN: 9781705267424

Author: R.B. Bernstein

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 9 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/27/2020

Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, History & Theory, Political Biography

Synopsis

The Education of John Adams is the first biography of John Adams by a biographer with legal training. It examines his origins in colonial Massachusetts, his education, and his struggle to choose a career and define a place for himself in colonial society. It explores the flowering of his legal career and the impact that law had on him and his understanding of himself; his growing involvement with the American Revolution as polemicist, as lawyer, as congressional delegate, and as diplomat; and his commitment to defining and expounding ideas about constitutionalism and how it should work as the body of ideas shaping the new United States.

The book traces his part in launching the government of the United States under the US Constitution; his service as the nation's first vice president and second president; and his retirement years, during which he was first a vexed and rejected ex-president and then became the revered Sage of Braintree. It describes the relationships that sustained him—with his wife, the brilliant and eloquent Abigail Adams; with his children; with such allies and supporters as Benjamin Rush and John Marshall; with such sometime friends and sometime adversaries as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson; and with such foes as Alexander Hamilton and Timothy Pickering.

About R.B. Bernstein

R. B. Bernstein is lecturer in law and politics at the City College of New York, where he has taught since 2011; he is also a distinguished adjunct professor of law at New York Law School, where he has taught since 1991. An expert on the American Revolution, the origins of the Constitution, and the early republic, he is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School and did his graduate work in history at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mike on September 21, 2020

As indicated by the title, this book was about the intellectual history of John Adams (with enough personal information to keep it from reading dry). There is nothing really new here based on what I have read on Adams. I think this book was very fair pointing out Adams' flaws and positive aspects bu......more

Goodreads review by Dave on January 10, 2021

"The Education of John Adams" is a well-written biography of our nation's second president. It shows Adams as a big thinker, influential writer, and someone who shaped the country in many different ways. We read about Adam's role in the Revolution, the Continental Congress, and vice-president to Geo......more

Goodreads review by Dan on July 15, 2023

Very little here that isn't in John Ferling's "John Adams: A Life" and David McCullough's "John Adams". It's considerably shorter than either, and would be a mostly adequate substitute for either. (Ferling's book is the best history, McCullough's is the best written and is more entertaining.) I don'......more

Goodreads review by Tammy on July 20, 2021

While not as accessible as David McCullough's biography of John Adams, it comes close! Bernstein succeeds in handling John Adams not only as a humorous, curmudgeon who helped shape the new country, but also as a man of letters and ideas. I really enjoyed the different aspects of Adams' "education,"......more

Goodreads review by Chris on July 12, 2020

I thoroughly enjoyed this perspective on John Adams. Having already read a few biographies of Adams and a wide range of books in which he is at least a minor player, there are a number of quirks of Adams that can seem contradictory. Bernstein did an excellent job of highlighting Adams’ thinking and......more