A top-notch dual biography of two presidents who deserved better.
An unsettling yet well-presented argument that the failures of John and John Quincy Adams illustrate a disturbing feature of American politics.
John Adams (1735-1826) became an early proponent of independence in the Continental Congress. Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, 2016, etc.) and Burstein (Democracy's Muse: How Thomas Jefferson Became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the While Being Dead, 2015, etc.), professors of history at Louisiana State University who co-authored Madison and Jefferson (2010), show how he disliked aristocracy but worried equally about the problems of a mass electorate. He believed that selfish humans would look after their own interests and persecute minorities they disliked. His solution was a strong president to oppose powerful interests and keep the majority from abusing fellow citizens. Missing the point, Thomas Jefferson considered Adams a closet monarchist. He entered office in 1797 as an independent in a nation with two parties: Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. Both worked successfully to ensure his defeat in 1800. It did not help that Adams was quarrelsome and insecure, lacking Jefferson’s cosmopolitan appeal. John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) became his father’s secretary as an adolescent and spent a lifetime serving the nation as a diplomat, senator, and secretary of state. Equally testy and independent, he suffered the misfortune of running in the 1824 presidential election, finishing second to Andrew Jackson. No one obtained a majority, so the House of Representatives determined the president, choosing Adams. Of course, this enraged Jackson and his Democratic Party, which controlled Congress, ensuring that Adams endured an unhappy presidency. Besides lively, warts-and-all portraits of the men and the surprisingly nasty politics of the young nation, the authors delve deeply into their philosophies and those of Enlightenment thinkers who influenced them. They conclude that both were more intelligent and experienced than most two-term presidents but lacked the common touch, essential in America, where we “glorify equality but ogle self-made billionaires and tabloid royalty.”
A top-notch dual biography of two presidents who deserved better.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55750-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
