John Adams David McCullough
David McCullough is our most dependable presidential biographer. Each of his efforts has been a resounding success, combining popular appeal with literary accolades. Mornings on Horseback, about Teddy Roosevelt, won the National Book Award, his second. For Truman, he received a Pulitzer Prize. Both were national bestsellers. For his next project, he decided to modify the formula and write about two presidents whose relationship influenced and illuminated American history. As collaborators, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson created the Declaration of Independence. As rivals — enemies, really — they came to represent the warring political factions that divided the young nation. By the end of their lives, though, these two great men had repaired their friendship, and in a fantastic coincidence died on the same date, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. While this seems an irresistible setup for a historian with McCullough's narrative gifts, in the end he gave it up. As McCullough immersed himself in his two subjects, he found himself increasingly drawn to Adams at the expense of his more famous colleague and narrowed his focus. In Adams, McCullough found another exemplar of his favorite subject, a man, like Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt, who overcame remarkable disadvantages to achieve greatness. With John Adams, which earned McCullough his second Pulitzer Prize in a row, he may have achieved his own measure of greatness. Farley, Powells.com
ISBN13: 9780743223133,
ISBN10: 0743223136
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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