John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life

Listen on the free Barnes & Noble NOOK app

Related collections and offers

Overview

A United States minister, senator, president, and congressman in turn, John Quincy Adams was one of the most prevalent and dedicated Americans in history. Drawing from Adams¿ seventy-year diary, author Paul Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned so many offices. We learn about his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies, including two sons lost to alcoholism, his recurring depression, exasperating behavior, and brilliant diplomacy. We see his frustration with the political life and the pleasure he drew from being a poet, critic, translator, essayist, botanist, and professor of oratory at Harvard. Nagel¿s great achievement, in this first biography of America¿s sixth president in a quarter century, is finally to portray Adams in all his talent and complexity.

Product Details
Related Subjects

Editorial Reviews

Times Literary Supplement - Paul Giles

Nagel clearly knows his topic inside out, and his account of Adam's eventful life--from diplomat to professor to President--is eminently readable...This book is thoroughly engaging. We glimpse a side of Adams that he preferred to keep private: his eye for the ladies, his self-lacerating depressions, his contempt for what he referred to as the 'crazy' orations of Ralph Waldo Emerson...What emerges from Nagel's book is a more fully rounded character.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Paul C. Nagel focuses on the sources of Adams's curious mixture of duty and defiance...It is the character of the man, his personality, that dominates this biography...Nagel has given us a John Quincy Adams with a heart as well as a head.

Washington Post

Nagel offers a rich portrait of the moody and anxiety-ridden Adams...This biography remov[es] the dust from his portrait and restor[es] the glow of historical significance to his splendid and troubled life.

Wall Street Journal

Nagel has set out to explore his hero's inner life...It is a story told largely from the vantage point of the subject.

Times Literary Supplement

Nagel clearly knows his topic inside out, and his account of Adam's eventful life—from diplomat to professor to President—is eminently readable...This book is thoroughly engaging. We glimpse a side of Adams that he preferred to keep private: his eye for the ladies, his self-lacerating depressions, his contempt for what he referred to as the 'crazy' orations of Ralph Waldo Emerson...What emerges from Nagel's book is a more fully rounded character.
— Paul Giles

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169719314
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/24/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Related Subjects

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

Nagel clearly knows his topic inside out, and his account of Adam's eventful life--from diplomat to professor to President--is eminently readable...This book is thoroughly engaging. We glimpse a side of Adams that he preferred to keep private: his eye for the ladies, his self-lacerating depressions, his contempt for what he referred to as the 'crazy' orations of Ralph Waldo Emerson...What emerges from Nagel's book is a more fully rounded character.

Times Literary Supplement - Paul Giles

Paul C. Nagel focuses on the sources of Adams's curious mixture of duty and defiance...It is the character of the man, his personality, that dominates this biography...Nagel has given us a John Quincy Adams with a heart as well as a head.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Nagel offers a rich portrait of the moody and anxiety-ridden Adams...This biography remov[es] the dust from his portrait and restor[es] the glow of historical significance to his splendid and troubled life.

Washington Post

Nagel has set out to explore his hero's inner life...It is a story told largely from the vantage point of the subject.

Wall Street Journal

Nagel clearly knows his topic inside out, and his account of Adam's eventful life—from diplomat to professor to President—is eminently readable...This book is thoroughly engaging. We glimpse a side of Adams that he preferred to keep private: his eye for the ladies, his self-lacerating depressions, his contempt for what he referred to as the 'crazy' orations of Ralph Waldo Emerson...What emerges from Nagel's book is a more fully rounded character.
— Paul Giles

Times Literary Supplement