John Adams
(McCullough, David)
David McCullough stands as a great popular historian. He brings American history to the non-Historian among us. What I mean to say is that he, like his popular historian counterpart, Stephen Ambrose are masters. Academic Historians may scoff at their seeming lack of erudition. This is a mistake.
JOHN ADAMS is an awesome book. When I was a lowly midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy a man spoke to the entire school about the value of studying great people of the past. This is all I remembered about the speech. The words have accompanied me since then (1994). I remembered them as I read Machiavelli?s PRINCE (I have an abstract of the PRINCE on shvoong.com). There he presents his historical knowledge as a way for the monarch to learn how to rule. He even goes on to say that if you aim to imitate great men and fail at least you will not be too far off the mark (this is a paraphrase). At the National Book Festival in Washington DC, where McCullough is a fixture, I had him sign my copy of JOHN ADAMS. His voice was familiar and I asked if he had been the speaker at the Academy. He had been.
JOHN ADAMS is often eclipsed by many of the other heroic figures of the American Revolution. This is a tragedy. McCullough presents the man at his core. Americans would do well to know the life and family of this man. We would be far from the country we are, and I am a realistic patriot, without John Adams and his family. The study of great men can do a lot for a person. John Adams may help to remove the cynical notion that being great comes easily to those who are. He was a hard working man. He worked tirelessly to become a lawyer. Then he put his world at risk to use his knowledge to create a Constitution that has carried what Alexis de Tocqueville in 1830 knew was a worldwide future destiny: representative democracy. (I have abstracted of Tocqueville?s democracy IN AMERICA for shvoong.com).
To truly understand representative democracy and its strengths JOHN ADAMS is indispensable for the non-academic.
Resumos Relacionados
- Democracy In America
- 1776--a Revolutionary Idea
- Tocqueville On American Character
- The Salmon Of Doubt
- Alexis De Tocqueville: A Life
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