Rating: 
Summary: "I am nothing, but I may be everything."
Review: John Adams is not the sexiest of America's ex-presidents and lives on largely in the shadows of the more famous and flashier founding fathers such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. David McCullough's biography, JOHN ADAMS, in part confirms this image of the second president: he was intensely private, reverent, and loyal. However, the positive qualities of the man come shining through as well in this work: his personal integrity, fidelity, and love of country. One comes away from reading JOHN ADAMS with the feeling that history has not given this man his due.
Nowhere does John Adams come off in a more positive light than when he is contrasted to his great friend and nemesis, Thomas Jefferson. Clearly, McCullough is a partisan of Adams, but one reading this book cannot help but feel the same. John Adams is the thrifty self-made man, Jefferson, the spendthrift playboy. Adams is the only founding father strongly against slavery on moral grounds, and yet history only remembers him for the Alien and Sedition Acts.
But, the man alone does not make the biography. What makes JOHN ADAMS a great biography and a recommended read is McCullough's narrative style which brings life to the man and brings the reader fully into the world of the revolutionary and early nationhood period of American history.
Jeremy W. Forstadt
Rating: 
Summary: Typical of McCullough - Rock Solid
Review: McCullough has a gift. He has an ability to pick and interesting person and/or story and use it as the core of an engaging account of a place and time. John Adams is no different. McCullough tells the story of Adams, and in the telling captures for the reader just how fragile and uncertain a time the beginning of the United States was. What now seems a foregone conclusion was anything but at the time. The book tells a great story about a great man, but it also makes you appreciate the battle that the founding fathers fought to see our country through a veritable minefield on its way to a solid footing.
Rating:
Summary: My new all-time favorite book
Review: Okay, so there's something about the John Adams character that appeals to me. I find him the most engaging of the fellows portrayed in the musical 1776. I root for him in the historic accounts of Continental Congress debates and the election of 1800. I find his wife the most empathetic of all the First Ladies.
David McCullough's book manages to make me love and admire this Founding Father even more. It doesn't matter that the tall and aristocratic Virginians Washington and Jefferson dwarfed Adams. It doesn't matter that the fourth estate ridiculed President Adam's corpulence or his lack of hair and teeth. It doesn't matter that Adams had a powderkeg temperament or an insatiable ego. The man whose heart is revealed in correspondence with his wife and friends, in the tenacity with which he fought for American independence and in the humility with which he accepted whatever role he was assigned in the service of his country - this is a great man, worthy of the admiration of all.
Thank you David McCullough for magnificently breathing life into this lively historical figure.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best biographies I have read...
Review: This book is a very readable book. Unlike some other history books which are dry, this one reads like a novel. I loved how they showed the personal side of a public man. His loving relationship with his wife Abigail is revealed through letters he wrote her. I also loved how the author described John Adams relationship with Thomas Jefferson, down to the little details like when they shared a room in philly one wanted the window open and the other wanted it closed. This book shows that the founding fathers did not live in a vacuum, all alone, responding to each others politics; but that they were freinds with complex relationships. I like how this book lets us see our countries greatest patriots as real people. I highly reccomend this book, there is a sage like quality to it. If this was the kind of reading offered in high school or college, I might have been more interested in history.
Rating:
Summary: Historical and Great!
Review: This book is a welcome surprise to the often-dry genre of "historical biography." McCullough's historical prowess is evident throughout, employing a wide variety of primary sources. That is, John Adams's own attention to correspondence and loyalty to journaling help the reader achieve a greater intimacy with characters. The entire book revels in emotional details, connecting the generations of McCullough and Adams.The book is filled with facts. Unfortunately, Adams's contribution to American foreign and domestic policy is often overshadowed by the popularity of men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; McCullough is successful in proving otherwise, despite a wanning of details in Adams's political carrerr, in comparison to the overwhelming personal connections in the book. Nevertheless, perfect for historians, students, and casual readers alike, the book is an excellent read I would highly recommend to any person of the globe wanting insight into John Adams, his time, or the founding of America.
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