John Adams: Party of One

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Macmillan, 2005 M03 16 - 530 páginas
An acute examination of a paradoxical U.S. president.

John Adams was an undiplomatic diplomat and an impolitic politician--a fierce revolutionary yet a detached and reluctant leader of the nation he helped to found. Few American public figures have ever been more devoted to doing the right thing, or more contemptuous of doing the merely popular thing. Yet his Yankee-bred fixation with ethical propriety and fiscal conservatism never stood in the way of his doing what was necessary. Adams hated debt, but as minister to the Netherlands during the Revolution, he was America's premier junk-bond salesman. And though raised a traditional Massachusetts Congregationalist, Adams was instrumental in bringing about the consecration of the first American Episcopal bishops. He was a warm and magnanimous friend and, on occasion, a man who fully vindicated the famous judgment of a rival he detested. Adams, said Benjamin Franklin, "means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, but, sometimes, and in some things, is absolutely out of his senses."

James Grant examines this complex and often contradictory founding father in the most well-rounded and multi-faceted portrait of Adams to date. Going from his beginnings on a hardscrabble Massachusetts farm to the Continental Congress to the Court of St. James and the White House, Grant traces the words and deeds of one of our most learned but politically star-crossed leaders.

Dentro del libro

Contenido

More Fortunate than All My Fellow Citizens
3
Son of Puritans
15
Glowing Like Furnaces
41
From So Small a Spark
52
Hearty in the Cause
70
In Defense of Captain Preston
85
In Opposition to the Rising Sun
99
Faith of Brattle Street
113
Peacemaker JunkBond Promoter
268
Joyous Reunion
296
Minister to the Court of St James
311
Stuffed Shirt
341
Mr Vice President
359
President by Three Votes
375
Party of One
403
Road to Tranquillity
430

A Man of 1774
125
Whirlwind
161
Conquer or Die
180
Making of a Diplomat
190
A Yankee in Paris
200
Constitution Monger
221
Fencing with Count Vergennes
233
Triumph in Amsterdam
248
Notes
451
382
484
Franklin and the Ladies of Paris New Haven Conn Yale University Press 1990 24647
488
Van Doren Benjamin Franklin 647
493
52627
497
Bibliography
499
Nagel John Quincy Adams 46
500
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James Grant is the editor of "Grant's Interest Rate Observer" and the author of four books on finance and financial history, including "Money of the Mind" (FSG, 1992) and "Minding Mr. Market" (FSG, 1993). He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Patricia Kavanagh, and their four children.

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