john quincy adams biography book

My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

The Best Biographies of John Quincy Adams

27 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Steve in Best Biographies Posts , President #06 - J Q Adams

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American history , best biographies , book reviews , Harlow Unger , John Quincy Adams , Joseph Wheelan , Marie Hecht , Paul Nagel , presidential biographies , Presidents

In every respect, John Quincy Adams’s life was made for a great novel or movie…or even a good biography. At age ten, John Quincy had his first opportunity to travel to Europe with his father (a diplomat in Paris) and begin a youth filled with foreign affairs, multiple languages and new customs. This in an era when few New Englanders of any age ever travelled beyond their own state’s borders.

Returning only briefly to the US, the father/son duo soon traveled abroad again – this time seeing Spain, France and the Netherlands. Fortunately for posterity, twelve-year-old John Quincy began a diary on this trip abroad – a diary he maintained for almost seventy years until his death.

As barely a teenager, multilingual John Quincy had the opportunity to leave his father behind in Europe and travel to St. Petersburg. He was asked to serve there as private secretary and translator to the American minister to Russia who, it turns out, could not speak French (the language of diplomacy at the time)…or even Russian. Later, having barely received a structured education of any kind, he began attending the University of Leyden while his father was a diplomat in Holland.

Returning to America to attend Harvard he found life in the US (and the legal profession, which he later entered) quite dull by comparison. After all, most of his sentient youth was spent absorbing multiple languages, attending diplomatic functions, going to the theatre and opera, and discussing world affairs with luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Lafayette and countless European kings, queens, counts and diplomats.

John Quincy’s rise was not over, of course. His experiences in Europe and Russia made him the obvious choice of four presidents to serve as a U.S. diplomat in multiple countries; he also served a term as a U.S. Senator and was Secretary of State under President Monroe. In 1824 he was elected President of the United States. Ironically, his presidency encompassed the least remarkable and most un successful four-year stretch of his entire life.

Unfortunately, his single term in office was hampered by his political “purity” (or naiveté), tactical errors in filling his cabinet, his failure to fully embrace either of the prevailing political parties, and a hostile Congress. He left the White House dejected, but was soon elected to the House of Representatives where he served – with great passion and impact – until the day he died. Indeed, his post- presidential years were some of the most successful and potent years of his entire public life.

Today, few Americans remember much about John Quincy Adams. And most of those who do recognize his legacy merely recall the vague impression left by an unsuccessful presidency. But in my mind, having just re-lived his life four times (on paper, anyway), John Quincy Adams’s life’s story is one of the more remarkable I have ever encountered.

Through hard work, good luck, a brilliant mind and a keen eye, John Quincy led almost a Swiss Family Robinson- style life of political and diplomatic adventure. Many will be surprised to learn that his single notable public failure – his presidency – was accompanied by a lifelong battle with intense self-doubt, self-criticism and even depression. But from start to finish, John Quincy’s was a life made for a great (if sometimes tragic) story.

* Marie Hecht’s “ John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man ” is the oldest, and lengthiest, of the four JQA biographies I read. In this book, Hecht marches steadily and comprehensively through John Quincy’s life, seeming to leave few stones unturned. This is neither the most exciting nor the most efficient biography of Adams I read. But it is probably the most thorough (if not insightful) of them all. All that is missing is the penetrating analysis of the personal side of John Quincy Adams which was provided in more contemporary biographies. ( Full review here )

“ John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life ” by Paul Nagel was published in 1997 and appears to have been the first significant biography of JQA in the twenty-five years following the publication of Hecht’s biography. In about one-third fewer pages, Nagel accomplishes most of what Hecht achieved, but with the added benefit of providing significantly more insight into the “private” side of John Quincy Adams. This seems particularly useful since John Quincy’s personal demons (endless self-doubt and episodic depression) inspired – or hampered – much that we witness of John Quincy Adams. ( Full review here )

Joseph Wheelan’s “ Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade ” provides a distinctly different perspective on John Quincy’s life. Rather than offering yet another review of Adams’s life from start to finish, Wheelan choses to focus on John Quincy’s last two decades of life – those which followed his unspectacular presidency. Despite his age and failing health, this was perhaps the most vigorous and effective period of his life. While this book cannot fully take the place of a traditional biography, no one’s understanding of John Quincy can be complete without reading “Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade.” ( Full review here )

“ John Quincy Adams ” by Harlow Unger is the most recently-published of my John Quincy Adams biographies. Without a doubt, Unger’s biography is the most “efficient” of the four as it covers Adams’s entire life (with some “extra” context-setting American history thrown in for good measure) in the fewest pages. This provides a fast-paced reading experience but also a less informative one. Left aside are numerous details, side-stories and nuances that are crucial in really understanding the sixth president. This book is useful as a quick-read on JQA, but for a slightly deeper investment, readers will get more from another biography. ( Full review here )

– – – – – – –

[ Added June 2019 ]

* Five years after reading the preceding four biographies of JQA I read “ John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit ” by James Traub – a biography from my “follow-up” list which was only published after I had completed my initial round of reading on JQA.

Published in 2016, “ John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit ” is not perfect, but sets the new standard for biographies of the 6th president. This book is well-organized, engaging and uncommonly thoughtful. It is erudite without being stiff, and is detailed but not exhausting. In the interest of efficiency Traub left coverage of certain interesting but tangential events from JQA’s youth out of the text. And the chapters covering Adams’s relatively unsuccessful presidency are probably the least fulfilling in the biography. But the book’s introduction, its consistently keen dissection of Adams’s personality, its observations concerning early American politics and its carefully nuanced coverage of Adams’s attitude toward slavery overwhelm any shortcomings. ( Full review here )

[ Added Jan 2021 ]

* I was able to read Fred Kaplan’s 2014 “ John Quincy Adams: American Visionary ” which was published the year after I initially got through the then-best biographies of JQA. With a 570-page narrative, this is the second longest of the half-dozen biographies of Adams I have read and among the most thorough. The biography emphasizes JQA’s love of poetry and his foresight in seeing the national fracture caused by slavery. But, the author’s predilection for presenting the narrative in an extraordinarily non-linear way is likely to frustrate readers new to Adams. And in the end, I find this to be a better study of John Quincy Adams than biography . ( Full review here )

[ Added Apr 2022 ]

* I finally read William J. Cooper’s 2017 “ The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics .” This is a resonably efficient (441-page) biography that does not aspire to the role of definitive biography. Instead, Cooper aims to place JQA within the context of his era of transformational politics. As a result, Cooper leaves aside much of Adams’s life as it relates to his heritage, parents, siblings, children and friends with a decided emphasis on his persona – particularly as it relates to his life in politics. Readers seeking to understand JQA’s place in history will find this enormously rewarding; those hoping to see the world through the eyes of the 6th president are likely to find it too clinical and focused on Adams’s public life. ( Full review here )

Best Biography of John Quincy Adams: “ John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit ” by James Traub

Honorable Mention: “ John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life ” by Paul Nagel

and “ John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man ” by Marie Hecht

Best “Beach Read” on JQA: “ John Quincy Adams ” by Harlow Unger

The 10 Best Books on President John Quincy Adams

Essential books on john quincy adams.

There are numerous books on John Quincy Adams, and it comes with good reason, beyond being America’s sixth President (1825-1829), he was a member of multiple political parties over the years, and also served as a diplomat, a Senator, and a member of the House of Representatives.

“Democracy, pure democracy, has at least its foundation in a generous theory of human rights. It is founded on the natural equality of mankind. It is the cornerstone of the Christian religion. It is the first element of all lawful government upon earth,” he remarked.

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of America’s most consequential figures to the height of political power, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

February 21, 1848, the House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.: Congressman John Quincy Adams, rising to speak, suddenly collapses at his desk; two days later, he dies in the Speaker’s chamber. The public mourning that followed, writes Paul C. Nagel, “exceeded anything previously seen in America.” Forgotten was his failed presidency and his often cold demeanor. It was the memory of an extraordinary human being – one who in his last years had fought heroically for the right of petition and against a war to expand slavery – that drew a grateful people to salute his coffin in the Capitol and to stand by the railroad tracks as his bier was transported from Washington to Boston.

Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned many offices: minister to Holland, Russia, and England, U.S. senator, secretary of state, president of the United States (1825-1829), and, finally, U.S. representative (the only ex-president to serve in the House).

On the basis of a thorough study of Adams’s seventy-year diary, among a host of other documents, the author gives us a richer account than we have yet had of his life – his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies (two sons lost to alcoholism), his brilliant diplomacy, his recurring depression, his exasperating behavior – and shows us why, in the end, only Abraham Lincoln’s death evoked a greater outpouring of national sorrow in nineteenth-century America.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan

Following his single term as President of the United States (1825-1829), John Quincy Adams, embittered by his loss to Andrew Jackson, boycotted his successor’s inauguration, just as his father John Adams had done. Rather than retire, the sixty-two-year-old former president, U.S. senator, secretary of state, and Harvard professor was elected by his Massachusetts friends and neighbors to the House of Representatives to throw off the “incubus of Jacksonianism.” It was the opening chapter in what was arguably the most remarkable post-presidency in American history.

In this engaging biography, historian Joseph Wheelan describes Adams’s battles against the House Gag Rule that banished abolition petitions; the removal of Eastern Indian tribes; and the annexation of slave-holding Texas, while recounting his efforts to establish the Smithsonian Institution.

As a “man of the whole country,” Adams was not bound by political party, yet was re-elected to the House eight times before collapsing at his “post of duty” on February 21, 1848, and then dying in the House Speaker’s office.

Nation Builder by Charles N. Edel

“America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy” – John Quincy Adams’s famous words are often quoted to justify noninterference in other nations’ affairs. Yet when he spoke them, Adams was not advocating neutrality or passivity but rather outlining a national policy that balanced democratic idealism with a pragmatic understanding of the young republic’s capabilities and limitations.

America’s rise from a confederation of revolutionary colonies to a world power is often treated as inevitable, but Charles N. Edel’s provocative biography of Adams argues that he served as the central architect of a grand strategy that shaped America’s rise. Adams’s particular combination of ideas and policies made him a critical link between the founding generation and the Civil War-era nation of Lincoln.

Adams’s ambitions on behalf of America’s interests, combined with a shrewd understanding of how to counter the threats arrayed against them, allowed him to craft a multitiered policy to insulate the nation from European quarrels, expand U.S. territory, harness natural resources, develop domestic infrastructure, education, and commerce, and transform the United States into a model of progress and liberty respected throughout the world.

Arguing About Slavery by William Lee Miller

In the 1830s slavery was so deeply entrenched that it could not even be discussed in Congress, which had enacted a “gag rule” to ensure that anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected. This stirring book chronicles the parliamentary battle to bring “the peculiar institution” into the national debate, a battle that some historians have called “the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy.”

The campaign to make slavery officially and respectably debatable was waged by John Quincy Adams who spent nine years defying gags, accusations of treason, and assassination threats. In the end, he made his case through a combination of cunning and sheer endurance. Telling this story with a brilliant command of detail, Arguing About Slavery endows history with majestic sweep, heroism, and moral weight.

John Quincy Adams by Harlow Giles Unger

He fought for Washington, served with Lincoln, witnessed Bunker Hill, and sounded the clarion against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of The Amistad . He served his nation as minister to six countries, secretary of state, senator, congressman, and president.

John Quincy Adams was all of these things and more. In this masterful biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals Quincy Adams as a towering figure in the nation’s formative years and one of the most courageous figures in American history, which is why he ranked first in John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage .

The Lost Founding Father by William J. Cooper

Long relegated to the sidelines of history as the hyper-intellectual son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams has never basked in the historical spotlight. Remembered, if at all, as an ineffective president during an especially rancorous time, Adams was humiliated in office after the contested election of 1824, viciously assailed by populist opponents for being both slippery and effete, and then resoundingly defeated by the western war hero Andrew Jackson, whose 1828 election ushered in an era of unparalleled expansion.

Aware of this reputation yet convinced that Adams deserves a reconsideration, award-winning historian William J. Cooper has reframed the sixth president’s life in an entirely original way, demonstrating that Adams should be considered our lost Founding Father, his morality and political philosophy the final link to the great visionaries who created our nation.

As Cooper demonstrates in this gem among books on John Quincy Adams, no one else in his generation – not Clay, Webster, Calhoun, or Jackson – ever experienced Europe as young Adams did, who at fourteen translated from French at the court of Catherine the Great. In fact, his very exposure to the ideas of the European Enlightenment that had so influenced the Founding Fathers, including their embrace of reason, were hardly shared by his contemporaries, particularly those who could not countenance slaves as equal human beings.

The Birth of Modern Politics by Lynn Hudson Parson

The 1828 presidential election, which pitted Major General Andrew Jackson against incumbent John Quincy Adams, has long been hailed as a watershed moment in American political history. It was the contest in which an unlettered, hot-tempered southwestern frontiersman, trumpeted by his supporters as a genuine man of the people, soundly defeated a New England “aristocrat” whose education and political resume were as impressive as any ever seen in American public life.

It was, many historians have argued, the country’s first truly democratic presidential election. It was also the election that opened a pandora’s box of campaign tactics, including coordinated media, get-out-the-vote efforts, fund-raising, organized rallies, opinion polling, campaign paraphernalia, ethnic voting blocs, “opposition research,” and smear tactics.

In this gem among books on John Quincy Adams, Parsons shows that the Adams-Jackson contest also began a national debate that is eerily contemporary, pitting those whose cultural, social, and economic values were rooted in community action for the common good against those who believed the common good was best served by giving individuals as much freedom as possible to promote their own interests. The book offers fresh and illuminating portraits of both Adams and Jackson and reveals how, despite their vastly different backgrounds, they had started out with many of the same values, admired one another, and had often been allies in common causes.

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin

A patriot by birth, John Quincy Adams’s destiny was foreordained. He was not only “The Greatest Traveler of His Age,” but his country’s most gifted linguist and most experienced diplomat. John Quincy’s world encompassed the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the early and late Napoleonic Age.

As his diplomat father’s adolescent clerk and secretary, he met everyone who was anyone in Europe, including America’s own luminaries and founding fathers, Franklin and Jefferson. All this made coming back to America a great challenge. But though he was determined to make his own career he was soon embarked, at Washington’s appointment, on his phenomenal work abroad, as well as on a deeply troubled though loving and enduring marriage.

But through all the emotional turmoil, he dedicated his life to serving his country. At 50, he returned to America to serve as Secretary of State to President Monroe. He was inaugurated President in 1824, after which he served as a stirring defender of the slaves of the Amistad rebellion and as a member of the House of Representatives from 1831 until his death in 1848.

John Quincy Adams by Robert V. Remini

Chosen president by the House of Representatives after an inconclusive election against Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams often failed to mesh with the ethos of his era, pushing unsuccessfully for a strong, consolidated national government. Historian Robert V. Remini recounts how in the years before his presidency Adams was a shrewd, influential diplomat, and later, as a dynamic secretary of state under President James Monroe, he solidified many basic aspects of American foreign policy, including the Monroe Doctrine.

Undoubtedly his greatest triumph was the negotiation of the Transcontinental Treaty, through which Spain acknowledged Florida to be part of the United States. After his term in office, he earned the nickname “Old Man Eloquent” for his passionate antislavery speeches.

Descent from Glory by Paul C. Nagel

There has never been any doubt that the Adams family was America’s first family in our politics and memory. This research-based and insightful book is a multigenerational biography of that family from the founder father John through the mordant writer Brooks.

If you enjoyed this guide to essential books on John Quincy Adams, be sure to check out our list of The 10 Best Books on President John Adams !

John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People

Randall woods. dutton, $45 (784p) isbn 978-0-593-18724-1.

Reviewed on: 07/15/2024

Genre: Nonfiction

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Nation Builder

John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic

Charles N. Edel

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ISBN 9780674368088

Publication date: 10/06/2014

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“America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”—John Quincy Adams’s famous words are often quoted to justify noninterference in other nations’ affairs. Yet when he spoke them, Adams was not advocating neutrality or passivity but rather outlining a national policy that balanced democratic idealism with a pragmatic understanding of the young republic’s capabilities and limitations. America’s rise from a confederation of revolutionary colonies to a world power is often treated as inevitable, but Charles N. Edel’s provocative biography of Adams argues that he served as the central architect of a grand strategy that shaped America’s rise. Adams’s particular combination of ideas and policies made him a critical link between the founding generation and the Civil War–era nation of Lincoln.

Examining Adams’s service as senator, diplomat, secretary of state, president, and congressman, Edel’s study of this extraordinary figure reveals a brilliant but stubborn man who was both visionary prophet and hard-nosed politician. Adams’s ambitions on behalf of America’s interests, combined with a shrewd understanding of how to counter the threats arrayed against them, allowed him to craft a multitiered policy to insulate the nation from European quarrels, expand U.S. territory, harness natural resources, develop domestic infrastructure, education, and commerce, and transform the United States into a model of progress and liberty respected throughout the world.

While Adams did not live to see all of his strategy fulfilled, his vision shaped the nation’s agenda for decades afterward and continues to resonate as America pursues its place in the twenty-first-century world.

Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic is an intellectual biography rather than a full-dress life. Few presidents merit such treatment as much as Adams, who, through essays, speeches, letters and a diary kept meticulously over almost 70 years, left a remarkable record of a great mind at work on the prospects of the young, fragile nation… For Adams, greatness without virtue—like the greatness of Napoleon—was monstrous. Principle was everything. I don’t know that today’s grand strategists would find Adams’s exacting standards congenial. He was, as Edel demonstrates, a farseeing man. But he asked more of America than it is inclined to ask of itself. —James Traub, Wall Street Journal

2014 has been a surprisingly fruitful year for studies of John Quincy Adams, and Edel ’s book is in many ways the most intelligent of the bunch. The Adams who emerges from his pages is a fittingly complex figure, as often at war with his own nature as he was with the petty partisanship or Southern slaveholding of his day. Edel’s readers will take away from his book a new appreciation of how much the United States they know owes to this early President they’ve scarcely heard of. —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

Charles Edel ’s accurate, honest, and sensitive portrait gets both the history and timeless wisdom of John Quincy Adams exactly right. His ambitious grand strategy was designed for nation building—at home, in North America. —Walter A. McDougall, University of Pennsylvania

Ideas and power are the key ingredients of national achievement, and John Quincy Adams mastered both at a crucial time in American history. Anyone interested in the history of our society and its future possibilities will benefit from this provocative and compelling account of Adams’s life, his thought, and his enduring legacies. —Jeremi Suri, author of Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama

[A] remarkable new work. Edel has written a book I wish I had written: a dual biography, of Adams and of the early American republic…The United States has been most successful when it has pursued the sort of grand strategy that Adams envisioned. Charles Edel has written a book worthy of the author of that grand strategy. —Mackubin Thomas Owens, National Review

Edel shows convincingly that Adams was the first to advance a comprehensive vision for his country. His ‘grand strategy’ required setting clear priorities and knowing how to tie them together in the proper sequence. Those priorities were neutrality with regard to the European powers, continental expansion westward, and promotion of economic development in the belief that improvement of the lives of ordinary citizens would strengthen republicanism. A last priority, not achieved in his lifetime, was to work for the abolition of slavery, which he regarded as a ‘stain’ on the character of the nation. —D. J. Maletz, Choice

In this masterful and fluidly written book, Edel tells the story of John Quincy Adams and explores Adams’ pivotal contributions to the American tradition of grand strategy. —Henry R. Nau, Foreign Affairs

[This book] has surprising resonance with the present. —James Fallows, The Atlantic

Charles N. Edel is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College.

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Harvard University Press

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Book Review: ‘John Quincy Adams’ gives the sixth president’s life the sweep and scope it deserves

This book cover image released by Dutton shows “John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People” by Randall Woods. (Dutton via AP)

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To be clear, Randall Woods’ “John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People” is not a leisurely read designed for the beach or airport. Clocking in at more than 700 pages, Woods’ biography of the sixth president is massive in both length and scope.

But that’s the type of book Adams deserves for a life and legacy that stretches well beyond his time as commander in chief and includes his years as a diplomat, senator and congressman. Readers could come away from the book feeling as though it could have easily been a multivolume series.

Woods, a history professor at the University of Arkansas, expertly profiles a president whose life was defined by contradictions. Much like his father, Adams despised politics but spent his life entrenched in public service. His championing of the nation’s expansion came at the cost of allowing the spread of slavery.

The most compelling portions of the book, in fact, focus on his years outside the White House. This includes his post-presidency years in Congress where he became an ally — albeit a tenuous one — of abolitionists and an outspoken opponent of the “gag rule” in the House that prevented the discussion of slavery.

It also displays that influence that Adams’ father, the nation’s second president, and the other Founding Fathers had on his view of the country and public service.

The biography sheds light on Adams’ relationships with figures throughout history, from Andrew Jackson to Daniel Webster. But what’s even more enlightening is his personal relationships, especially with his family, as Woods demonstrates the strain that his years of service had.

Woods uses Adams’ life to also tell the story of the country’s evolution, and his descriptions of life in the nation’s capital are some of the most entertaining. This includes a tale of Adams as president nearly drowning in the Potomac River, where he would swim regularly.

In his later years, the book describes, Adams exchanges letters with a British actor about the merits of William Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet.” As Woods writes, Adams “identified completely with Shakespeare’s fallen angel” and viewed the play as a cautionary tale for the country.

Whether or not readers view Adams’ life as a cautionary tale, Woods’ biography is a sweeping look not just at his life but at the early years of the republic.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Book Scrolling

Best Book Lists, Award Aggregation, & Book Data

The Best Books To Learn About President John Quincy Adams

(You can view the rest of our presidential Best Book lists by going to our Best US President Books page, or for a more in-depth look at how we found and ranked the books you can visit our Best Book About Every United States President article.)

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	1825-1829
	Democratic-Republican
	John C. Calhoun
	Massachusetts
	Silkworms & an Alligator
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	24

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The Best Book About John Quincy Adams (Appears on 7 Lists)

John quincy adams: a public life, a private life by paul c. nagel.

At Times Dull
Best Presidential Bios
Library of Congress
Mandi Lindner
Presidential History
Presidents USA
The Tailored Man

February 21, 1848, the House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.: Congressman John Quincy Adams, rising to speak, suddenly collapses at his desk; two days later, he dies in the Speaker’s chamber. The public mourning that followed, writes Paul C. Nagel, “exceeded anything previously seen in America.” Forgotten was his failed presidency and his often cold demeanor. It was the memory of an extraordinary human being–one who in his last years had fought heroically for the right of petition and against a war to expand slavery–that drew a grateful people to salute his coffin in the Capitol and to stand by the railroad tracks as his bier was transported from Washington to Boston. Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned many offices: minister to Holland, Russia, and England, U.S. senator, secretary of state, president of the United States (1825-1829), and, finally, U.S. representative (the only ex-president to serve in the House). On the basis of a thorough study of Adams’ seventy-year diary, among a host of other documents, the author gives us a richer account than we have yet had of JQA’s life–his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies (two sons lost to alcoholism), his brilliant diplomacy, his recurring depression, his exasperating behavior–and shows us why, in the end, only Abraham Lincoln’s death evoked a greater outpouring of national sorrow in nineteenth-century America. We come to see how much Adams disliked politics and hoped for more from life than high office; how he sought distinction in literary and scientific endeavors, and drew his greatest pleasure from being a poet, critic, translator, essayist, botanist, and professor of oratory at Harvard; how tension between the public and private Adams vexed his life; and how his frustrations kept him masked and aloof (and unpopular). 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.

Learn More About Book

#2-3 Books (Appear on 4 Lists Each)

John quincy adams by robert v. remini.

John Quincy Adams (The American Presidents #6) by Robert V. Remini, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

All The Presidents Books
The Washington Post

Chosen president by the House of Representatives after an inconclusive election against Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams often failed to mesh with the ethos of his era, pushing unsuccessfully for a strong, consolidated national government. Historian Robert V. Remini recounts how in the years before his presidency Adams was a shrewd, influential diplomat, and later, as a dynamic secretary of state under President James Monroe, he solidified many basic aspects of American foreign policy, including the Monroe Doctrine.

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

In this fresh and lively biography rich in literary analysis and new historical detail, Fred Kaplan brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams—the little known and much misunderstood sixth president of the United States and the first son of John and Abigail Adams—and persuasively demonstrates how Adams’s inspiring, progressive vision guided his life and helped shape the course of America.

#4-5 (Appear on 3 Lists)

John quincy adams by harlow unger.

He fought for Washington, served with Lincoln, witnessed Bunker Hill, and sounded the clarion against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of The Amistad. He served his nation as minister to six countries, secretary of state, senator, congressman, and president.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan

1858 --- by George Peter Alexander Healy --- Image by © The Corcoran Gallery of Art/CORBIS

Lists It Appears On:

Following his single term as President of the United States (1825–1829), John Quincy Adams, embittered by his loss to Andrew Jackson, boycotted his successor’s inauguration, just as his father John Adams had done (the only two presidents ever to do so). Rather than retire, the sixty-two-year-old former president, U.S. senator, secretary of state, and Harvard professor was elected by his Massachusetts friends and neighbors to the House of Representatives to throw off the “incubus of Jacksonianism.” It was the opening chapter in what was arguably the most remarkable post-presidency in American history.

#6-8 (Appear on 2 Lists)

John quincy adams: a personal history of an independent man by marie hecht.

John Quincy Adams- A Personal History of an Independent Man by Marie B. Hecht, Katherine E. Speirs

The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams by Leonard L. Richards

Richards’ study presents not only a vivid portrait of John Quincy Adams but also provides an insightful exploration of American politics in the 1830s and 40s. Examining one of the few presidents who sustained a political career after his term in the White House, Richards depicts how two years after losing the presidential election to Andrew Jackson, Adams ran for the House of Representatives and served there until his death seventeen years later.

John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis

John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (John Quincy Adams #1) by Samuel Flagg Bemis

#9-24 (Appear on 1 List)

American phoenix: john quincy and louisa adams, the war of 1812, and the exile that saved american independence by jane hampton cook.

American Phoenix is the sweeping, riveting tale of a grand historic adventure across forbidding oceans and frozen tundra—from the bustling ports and towering birches of Boston to the remote reaches of pre-Soviet Russia, from an exile in arctic St. Petersburg to resurrection and reunion among the gardens of Paris. Upon these varied landscapes this Adams and his Eve must find a way to transform their banishment into America’s salvation.

Amistad: A Novel by Alexs Pate

Based on the true story of the 1839 mutiny on board the Spanish slave ship, Amistad, here is the frightening sequence of events that led fifty-three young men and women – and one young nation – to seek freedom and justice for all people. Amistad is the story of Cinque, the illegally enslaved son of a Mende chief who led an uprising full of fury and courage. It is also the story of John Quincy Adams, the former American president, who reluctantly heeded the call to justice and defended Cinque in a Supreme Court trial that would alter the nation’s history. And it is the story of men and women searching to find truth and to uphold the basic tenets of the American Constitution. Brilliantly narrated by award-winning novelist Alexs Pate, Amistad celebrates the human spirit’s profound determination to fight, hope, and to be free. Visit the “Amistad” book site! A junior novelization is also available for young adults.

Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress by William Lee Miller

Arguing about Slavery- The Great Battle in the United States Congress by William Lee Miller

In the 1830s slavery was so deeply entrenched that it could not even be discussed in Congress, which had enacted a “gag rule” to ensure that anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected. This stirring book chronicles the parliamentary battle to bring “the peculiar institution” into the national debate, a battle that some historians have called “the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy.” The campaign to make slavery officially and respectably debatable was waged by John Quincy Adams who spent nine years defying gags, accusations of treason, and assassination threats. In the end he made his case through a combination of cunning and sheer endurance. Telling this story with a brilliant command of detail, Arguing About Slaveryendows history with majestic sweep, heroism, and moral weight.

Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family by Paul C. Nagel

There has never been any doubt that the Adams family was America’s first family in our politics and memory. This research-based and insightful book is a multigenerational biography of that family from the founder father John through the mordant writer Brooks.

Diary of John Quincy Adams by John Quincy Adams

The Diary of John Quincy Adams 1794-1845 by John Quincy Adams

This 586 page book is a compilation of the original 12 volumes published between 1874-1877 by Charles Francis Adams. Allan Nevins has been able to select from the “Memoirs” that matter which is most important and of the greatest permanent worth. He” has given emphasis to the material which throws light on the social background of the period, on John Quincy Adams’ character, and on the more dramatic political and diplomatic events of the time. Thus, in 600 pages, he has presented nearly everything from the Diary that the general reader and ordinary student will want.”

John Quincy Adams by Lynn H. Parsons

John Quincy Adams- A Bibliography by Lynn H. Parsons

The 1828 presidential election, which pitted Major General Andrew Jackson against incumbent John Quincy Adams, has long been hailed as a watershed moment in American political history. It was the contest in which an unlettered, hot-tempered southwestern frontiersman, trumpeted by his supporters as a genuine man of the people, soundly defeated a New England “aristocrat” whose education and political résumé were as impressive as any ever seen in American public life. It was, many historians have argued, the country’s first truly democratic presidential election. It was also the election that opened a Pandora’s box of campaign tactics, including coordinated media, get-out-the-vote efforts, fund-raising, organized rallies, opinion polling, campaign paraphernalia, ethnic voting blocs, “opposition research,” and smear tactics.

John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire by William Earl Weeks

This is the story of a man, a treaty, and a nation. The man was John Quincy Adams, regarded by most historians as America’s greatest secretary of state. The treaty was the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, of which Adams was the architect. It acquired Florida for the young United States, secured a western boundary extending to the Pacific, and bolstered the nation’s position internationally. As William Weeks persuasively argues, the document also represented the first determined step in the creation of an American global empire.

John Quincy Adams and the Union by Samuel Flagg Bemis

John Quincy Adams and the Union (John Quincy Adams #2) by Samuel Flagg Bemis

John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit by James Traub

John Quincy Adams was the last of his kind—a Puritan from the age of the Founders who despised party and compromise, yet dedicated himself to politics and government. The son of John Adams, he was a brilliant ambassador and secretary of state, a frustrated president at a historic turning point in American politics, and a dedicated congressman who literally died in office—at the age of 80, in the House of Representatives, in the midst of an impassioned political debate.

Letters Of John Quincy Adams, To His Son, On The Bible And Its Teachings by John Quincy Adams

Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teaching by John Quincy Adams

Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams by William H. Seward

Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams- Sixth President of the Unied States by William H. Seward

HENRY ADAMS the founder of the Adams family in America fled from ecclesiastical oppression in England and joined the Colony at a very early period but at what precise time is not recorded.

Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams by Margery M. Heffron

Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, wife and political partner of John Quincy Adams, became one of the most widely known women in America when her husband assumed office as sixth president in 1825. Shrewd, intellectual, and articulate, she was close to the center of American power over many decades, and extensive archives reveal her as an unparalleled observer of the politics, personalities, and issues of her day. Louisa left behind a trove of journals, essays, letters, and other writings, yet no biographer has mined these riches until now. Margery Heffron brings Louisa out of the shadows at last to offer the first full and nuanced portrait of an extraordinary first lady.

Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams by Josiah Quincy

The ensuing Memoir comprises the most important events in the life of a statesman second to none of his contemporaries in laborious and faithful devotion to the service of his country. The light attempted to be thrown on his course has been derived from personal acquaintance, from his public works, and from authentic unpublished materials. The chief endeavor has been to render him the expositor of his own motives, principles, and character, without fear or favor,—in the spirit neither of criticism or eulogy.

The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters by Paul C. Nagel

From his vast storehouse of knowledge about the Adams family. Nagelpulls out the feminine threads of that tapestry to write all about the Adams women, from Abigail to daughter Nabby, from Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy, to Clover Adams, wife of Henry, with others making more than cameo appearances. They all lived exceptional, if not extraordinary, lives, in different ways.

The Presidency of John Quincy Adams by Mary W. Hargreaves

The Presidency of John Quincy Adams (American Presidency Series) by Mary W.M. Hargreaves

Historians have not been generous in judging the presidency of John Quincy Adams. Those who have most conspicuously upheld Adams’s fame have, at the same time, virtually ignored his service in the White House. Critics, on the other hand, have described his administration as a failure, founded upon “bargain and corruption” and marked by exclusion of the United States from the British West Indian trade, the ineffectiveness of its efforts to promote strong Pan-American relationships, and the enactment of the “tariff of abominations.” Some analysts have even argued that it generated the sectionalism which terminated the “Era of Good Feelings.”

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin

A patriot by birth, John Quincy Adams’s destiny was foreordained. He was not only “The Greatest Traveler of His Age,” but his country’s most gifted linguist and most experienced diplomat. John Quincy’s world encompassed the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the early and late Napoleonic Age. As his diplomat father’s adolescent clerk and secretary, he met everyone who was anyone in Europe, including America’s own luminaries and founding fathers, Franklin and Jefferson. All this made coming back to America a great challenge. But though he was determined to make his own career he was soon embarked, at Washington’s appointment, on his phenomenal work abroad, as well as on a deeply troubled though loving and enduring marriage. But through all the emotional turmoil, he dedicated his life to serving his country. At 50, he returned to America to serve as Secretary of State to President Monroe. He was inaugurated President in 1824, after which he served as a stirring defender of the slaves of the Amistad rebellion and as a member of the House of Representatives from 1831 until his death in 1848. In The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams, Phyllis Lee Levin provides the deeply researched and beautifully written definitive biography of one of the most fascinating and towering early Americans.

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By Joseph J. Ellis

April 4, 2016

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Militant Spirit By James Traub 620 pp. Basic Books. $35.

In June of 1775, when John Quincy Adams was almost 8 years old, his mother, the indomitable Abigail, took him by the hand up a peak in Braintree, Mass., to view from afar the battle of Bunker Hill. Over 70 years later, in February 1848, “Old Man Eloquent,” as he was then called, collapsed at his desk in the House of Representatives and an obscure one-term congressman named Abraham Lincoln was assigned to the committee making the funeral arrangements. Many of the eulogies to Adams identified him as the last remaining link to the founding generation. James Traub’s splendid new biography, “John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit,” asks us to envision him as the missing link between the creation of the American Republic and its near dissolution in the Civil War.

John Quincy Adams is easy to admire, but difficult to like, much less love. Traub, whose books include “The Freedom Agenda,” recognizes this problem from the start and solves it by not trying. His Adams is cold, emotionally stunted, impossibly solitary and self-contained, just the kind of man who, as Ralph Waldo Emerson described him, took sulfuric acid with his tea. Even his own adoring son Charles Francis acknowledged that “he makes enemies by perpetually wearing the iron mask.”

The mature Adams, with all his sharp edges and impossible standards of perfection, was very much a product of the parenting practices of Abigail and John. Many American boys — now also girls — are raised to believe that they can grow up to become president of the United States. John Quincy was raised to believe that anything less rendered him an abject failure. Abigail was actually tougher on him than John, and one can only wince at her admonition, written after her 10-year-old son had completed a risky voyage across the Atlantic with his father: “For dear as you are to me, I had much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed . . . rather than see you an immoral profligate or a graceless child.” John Quincy never had a childhood, nor was he raised to be a happy man. He was instead fashioned like a hardened steel projectile, aimed at the center of American history.

The sheer scale of Adams’s career poses narrative problems for any aspiring biographer: minister to four European capitals, senator, Harvard professor, secretary of state, president, representative in the House. And even that listing is deceptively simple. More than 60 years ago the Yale historian Samuel Flagg Bemis required two fat volumes to record the public story, which flowed through diplomatic nooks and crannies in multiple venues and stretched from the Louisiana Purchase, through the Monroe Doctrine, to the Mexican War and beyond.

Traub begins with the assumption that the career should be folded into the life, not the other way around. He therefore makes Adams’s journal his central source, the prism through which to view the man. He provides chapter-length accounts, for example, of the Monroe Doctrine and Adams’s argument before the Supreme Court defending African prisoners in the Amistad case. Some scholarly specialists might ask for more details, but I found his versions reliably thorough, blissfully bereft of jargon and nicely paced to blend with the private story.

Which is to say that we glimpse Adams swimming with nothing but goggles in the Potomac at dawn, writing an epic poem about early Ireland, planting hundreds of fruit trees on the trips back to Quincy and, most important of all, interacting awkwardly with Louisa Catherine Adams, his wife of 50 years. Louisa Catherine was an orchid of a woman, indispensable as John Quincy’s diplomatic partner, with a social sense that he altogether lacked, a bit fragile (nine miscarriages) and the hummingbird to Abigail’s eagle. Traub devotes more space to Louisa Catherine than any previous Adams biographer, in part because she is so omnipresent in the journal.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, john quincy adams: american visionary.

About the Book

Fred Kaplan, the acclaimed, award-winning author of LINCOLN , returns with JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, an illuminating biography of one of the most overlooked presidents in American history --- a leader of sweeping perspective whose progressive values helped shape the course of the nation.

In this fresh and lively biography rich in literary analysis and new historical detail, Fred Kaplan brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams --- the little known and much misunderstood sixth president of the United States and the first son of John and Abigail Adams --- and persuasively demonstrates how Adams's inspiring, progressive vision guided his life and helped shape the course of America.

Kaplan draws on a trove of unpublished archival material to trace Adams's evolution from his childhood during the Revolutionary War to his brilliant years as Secretary of State to his time in the White House and beyond. He examines Adams's myriad sides: the public and private man, the statesman and writer, the wise thinker and passionate advocate, the leading abolitionist and fervent federalist who believed strongly in both individual liberty and the government's role as an engine of progress and prosperity. In these ways --- and in his energy, empathy, sharp intellect and powerful gift with words both spoken and written --- he was a predecessor of Lincoln and, later, FDR and Obama. Indeed, this sweeping biography makes clear how Adams's forward-thinking values, his definition of leadership, and his vision for the nation's future is as much about twenty-first century America as it is about Adams's own time.

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS paints a rich portrait of this brilliant leader and his significance to the nation and our own lives.

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

Publication Date: June 9, 2015
Genres: Biography , History , Nonfiction
Paperback: 672 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN-10: 0061915424
ISBN-13: 9780061915420

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Table Of Contents

John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States (1825–29). In his prepresidential years he was one of America’s greatest diplomats—formulating, among other things, what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine —and in his postpresidential years (as a U.S. congressman, 1831–48) he fought against the expansion of slavery .

John Quincy Adams was the eldest son of John and Abigail Adams . Growing up during the American Revolution , he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from Penn’s Hill and heard the cannons roar across the Back Bay in Boston . He accompanied his father on diplomatic missions to Europe and studied in Paris and Leiden , Netherlands.

In the U.S. presidential election of 1824 , Andrew Jackson received 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, William Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. Because no one had a majority, the House of Representatives chose between the three top candidates. Clay supported Adams, ensuring his victory and the bitter opposition of the Jacksonians to all his initiatives.

John Quincy Adams was a diplomat in the administrations of George Washington , John Adams , and James Madison . He served in the Massachusetts Senate and the United States Senate, and he taught at Harvard . He was secretary of state under James Monroe . After his presidential term , he served in the House of Representatives.

John Quincy Adams signed the Treaty of Ghent and played a leading part in the U.S. acquisition of Florida and establishing the northern boundary of the United States. He successfully defended the mutineers of the slave ship Amistad as freemen before the Supreme Court against efforts to return them to their masters and to inevitable death.

Learn about the United States' sixth president, John Quincy Adams, on the National Republican Party

John Quincy Adams (born July 11, 1767, Braintree [now Quincy], Massachusetts [U.S.]—died February 23, 1848, Washington, D.C. , U.S.) was the sixth president of the United States (1825–29) and eldest son of President John Adams . In his prepresidential years he was one of America’s greatest diplomats (formulating, among other things, what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine ), and in his postpresidential years (as a U.S. congressman, 1831–48) he conducted a consistent and often dramatic fight against the expansion of slavery .

John Quincy Adams entered the world at the same time that his maternal great-grandfather, John Quincy, for many years a prominent member of the Massachusetts legislature , was leaving it—hence his name. He grew up as a child of the American Revolution . He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from Penn’s Hill and heard the cannons roar across the Back Bay in Boston . His patriot father, John Adams , at that time a delegate to the Continental Congress , and his patriot mother, Abigail Smith Adams , had a strong molding influence on his education after the war had deprived Braintree of its only schoolmaster. In 1778 and again in 1780 the boy accompanied his father to Europe . He studied at a private school in Paris in 1778–79 and at the University of Leiden , Netherlands , in 1780. Thus, at an early age he acquired an excellent knowledge of the French language and a smattering of Dutch . In 1780, also, he began to keep regularly the diary that forms so conspicuous a record of his doings and those of his contemporaries through the next 60 years of American history. Self-appreciative, like most of the Adams clan, he once declared that, if his diary had been even richer, it might have become "next to the Holy Scriptures, the most precious and valuable book ever written by human hands."

In 1781, at age 14, Adams accompanied Francis Dana, United States envoy to Russia , as his private secretary and interpreter of French. Dana, after lingering for more than a year in St. Petersburg , was not received by the Russian government, so in 1782 Adams, returning by way of Scandinavia , Hanover , and the Netherlands, joined his father in Paris. There he acted, in an informal way, as an additional secretary to the American commissioners in the negotiation of the Peace of Paris that concluded the American Revolution. Instead of remaining in London with his father, who had been appointed United States minister to the Court of St. James’s , he chose to return to Massachusetts, where he attended Harvard College , graduating in 1787. He then read law at Newburyport under the tutelage of Theophilus Parsons, and in 1790 he was admitted to the bar association in Boston. While struggling to establish a practice, he wrote a series of articles for the newspapers in which he controverted some of the doctrines in Thomas Paine ’s Rights of Man (1791). In another later series he ably supported the neutrality policy of George Washington ’s administration as it faced the war that broke out between France and England in 1793. These articles were brought to President Washington’s attention and resulted in Adams’s appointment as U.S. minister to the Netherlands in May 1794.

The Hague was then the best diplomatic listening post in Europe for the War of the First Coalition against Revolutionary France . Young Adams’s official dispatches to the secretary of state and his informal letters to his father, who was then the vice president , kept the government well informed of the diplomatic activities and wars of the distressed Continent and the danger of becoming involved in the European vortex. These letters were also read by President Washington: some of Adams’s phrases, in fact, appeared in Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796. During the absence of Thomas Pinckney , the regular United States minister to Great Britain , Adams transacted public business in London with the British Foreign Office relating to the exchange of ratifications of the Jay Treaty of 1794 between the United States and Great Britain. In 1796 Washington, who came to regard young Adams as the ablest officer in the foreign service , appointed him minister to Portugal , but before his departure his father became president and changed the young diplomat’s destination to Prussia .

John Quincy Adams was married in London in 1797, on the eve of his departure for Berlin , to Louisa Catherine Johnson ( Louisa Adams ), daughter of the United States consul Joshua Johnson, a Marylander by birth, and his wife, Katherine Nuth, an Englishwoman. Adams had first met her when he was 12 years old and his father was minister to France. Fragile in health, she suffered from migraine headaches and fainting spells. Yet she proved to be a gracious hostess who played the harp and was learned in Greek, French, and English literature . Accompanying her husband on his various missions in Europe, she came to be regarded as one of the most-traveled women of her time.

Johnson was not, however, Adams’s first love. When he was 14 years old, he had had a “crush” on an actress he saw perform in France, and for years afterward, he confessed, she was in his dreams. At age 22 he fell deeply in love with one Mary Frazier but was dissuaded from marrying her by his mother, who insisted that he was not able to support a wife. Ultimately, Adams could see that, in marrying a rich heiress like Louisa Johnson, he might be able to enjoy the leisure to pursue a career as a writer, but her family suffered business reverses and declared bankruptcy only a few weeks after the wedding.

The union had many stormy moments. Adams was cold and often depressed, and he admitted that his political adversaries regarded him as a “gloomy misanthropist” and “unsocial savage.” His wife is said to have regretted her marriage into the Adams family . The loss of two sons in adulthood—and a daughter in infancy—may have heightened the strains between husband and wife. The eldest son, George Washington Adams, was a gambler, womanizer, and alcoholic whose death by drowning may have been suicide . The second son, John Adams II, succumbed to alcohol . He remains the only son of a president who was married in the White House . On that occasion, the president unbent and danced the Virginia reel . A third son, Charles Francis Adams , brought honor to the family name once again, being elected to the House of Representatives and serving as United States minister to England during the American Civil War .

While in Berlin, Adams negotiated (1799) a treaty of amity and commerce with Prussia. Recalled from Berlin by President Adams after the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1800, the younger Adams reached Boston in 1801 and the next year was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. In 1803 the Massachusetts legislature elected him a member of the Senate of the United States .

COMMENTS

The Best Biographies of John Quincy Adams
Best Biography of John Quincy Adams: " John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit " by James Traub. Honorable Mention: " John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life " by Paul Nagel. and " John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man " by Marie Hecht. Best "Beach Read" on JQA: " John Quincy Adams " by Harlow Unger.
John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People Hardcover
This magisterial biography rightly places John Quincy Adams at the forefront of great American statesmen." —The New York Journal of Books "This splendid biography is a genuine Life and Times story of a remarkable American who served his country for more than a half century as diplomat, senator, secretary of state, president, public ...
The 10 Best Books on President John Quincy Adams
Mr. Adams's Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan. Following his single term as President of the United States (1825-1829), John Quincy Adams, embittered by his loss to Andrew Jackson, boycotted his successor's inauguration, just as his father John Adams had done.
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary
This book is the biography of John Quincy Adams. It covers his complete life: born 1767; died 1848. Before reading this book, I, of course, knew that he was the sixth President of the United States (1825 - 1829) and the son of Abigail and John Adams, the second President of the United States.
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary. Hardcover - May 6, 2014. Fred Kaplan, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Lincoln, returns with John Quincy Adams, an illuminating biography of one of the most overlooked presidents in American history—a leader of sweeping perspective whose progressive values helped shape the course of the nation.
John Quincy Adams Paperback
John Quincy Adams was all of these things and more. In this masterful biography, award winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals Quincy Adams as a towering figure in the nation's formative years and one of the most courageous figures in American history, which is why he ranked first in John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage.
John Quincy Adams
A magisterial journey through the epic life and transformative times of John Quincy Adams In this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy's long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic.
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan
Kindle $9.99. Rate this book. Fred Kaplan, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Lincoln, returns with John Quincy Adams, an illuminating biography of one of the most overlooked presidents in American history—a leader of sweeping perspective whose progressive values helped shape the course of the nation. In this fresh and lively biography ...
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary
If he could read this biography, Adams would be satisfied that he had been fairly dealt with at last." —Carol Berkin, Washington PostIn this fresh and illuminating biography, Fred Kaplan, the acclaimed author of Lincoln, brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams—the little-known and much-misunderstood sixth president of the ...
John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People
A magisterial journey through the epic life and transformative times of John Quincy Adams In this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy's long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic. Born the first son of John and Abigail Adams, he was pressured to follow in his father's ...
John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People
Dutton, $45 (784p) ISBN 978--593-18724-1. According to this sparkling biography, John Quincy Adams both "reflect [ed] and transcend [ed] his famous parents," just as he was both a product of ...
Nation Builder
Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic is an intellectual biography rather than a full-dress life. Few presidents merit such treatment as much as Adams, who, through essays, speeches, letters and a diary kept meticulously over almost 70 years, left a remarkable record of a great mind at work on the prospects of the young, fragile nation…
Book Review: 'John Quincy Adams' gives the sixth president's life the
To be clear, Randall Woods' "John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People" is not a leisurely read designed for the beach or airport. Clocking in at more than 700 pages, Woods' biography of the sixth president is massive in both length and scope.
John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People|Hardcover
A magisterial journey through the epic life and transformative times of John Quincy Adams. In this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy's long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic.
Books by John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams has 210 books on Goodreads with 3181 ratings. John Quincy Adams's most popular book is Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the B...
The Best Books To Learn About President John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan. Lists It Appears On: Best Presidential Bios; Library of Congress; Mashable; Presidents USA; In this fresh and lively biography rich in literary analysis and new historical detail, Fred Kaplan brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams—the little known and much misunderstood sixth president of the United States and the first ...
'John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit,' by James Traub
Militant Spirit. By James Traub. 620 pp. Basic Books. $35. In June of 1775, when John Quincy Adams was almost 8 years old, his mother, the indomitable Abigail, took him by the hand up a peak in ...
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary
by Fred Kaplan. Publication Date: June 9, 2015. Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction. Paperback: 672 pages. Publisher: Harper Perennial. ISBN-10: 0061915424. ISBN-13: 9780061915420. Features. Fred Kaplan brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams --- the little known and much misunderstood sixth president of the United States ...
John Quincy Adams
Books. John Quincy Adams. Lynn Hudson Parsons. Rowman & Littlefield, 1999 - Biography & Autobiography - 284 pages. He was born in 1767, a subject of the British Empire, and died in 1848, a citizen of the United States and a member of Congress in company with Abraham Lincoln. In his dramatic career he had known George Washington and Benjamiin ...
Amazon.com: John Quincy Adams: A Life from Beginning to End
John Quincy Adams: A Life from Beginning to End (Biographies of US Presidents) - Kindle edition by History, Hourly. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading John Quincy Adams: A Life from Beginning to End (Biographies of US Presidents).
John Quincy Adams
v. t. e. John Quincy Adams (/ ˈkwɪnzi / ⓘ; [ a ] July 11, 1767 - February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825.
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (born July 11, 1767, Braintree [now Quincy], Massachusetts [U.S.]—died February 23, 1848, Washington, D.C., U.S.) was the sixth president of the United States (1825-29) and eldest son of President John Adams. In his prepresidential years he was one of America's greatest diplomats (formulating, among other things, what ...
Amazon.com: John Quincy Adams Biography
John Quincy Adams A Quick Biography and 25 Interesting Facts: A 15 Minutes Smarter Short Read (Presidential Series) Part of: Presidential Series (6 books) ... Diaries Vol. 1 1779-1821 (LOA #293) (Library of America Adams Family Collection Book 5) Book 3 of 4: Library of America Adams Family Collection. 4.7 out of 5 stars. 15. Kindle. $18.99 ...

My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

The Best Biographies of John Quincy Adams

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The 10 Best Books on President John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan

Nation Builder by Charles N. Edel

Arguing About Slavery by William Lee Miller

John Quincy Adams by Harlow Giles Unger

The Lost Founding Father by William J. Cooper

The Birth of Modern Politics by Lynn Hudson Parson

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin

John Quincy Adams by Robert V. Remini

Descent from Glory by Paul C. Nagel

John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People

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Book Review: ‘John Quincy Adams’ gives the sixth president’s life the sweep and scope it deserves

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The Best Books To Learn About President John Quincy Adams

The Best Book About John Quincy Adams (Appears on 7 Lists)

#2-3 Books (Appear on 4 Lists Each)

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

#4-5 (Appear on 3 Lists)

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan

#6-8 (Appear on 2 Lists)

The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams by Leonard L. Richards

John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis

#9-24 (Appear on 1 List)

Amistad: A Novel by Alexs Pate

Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress by William Lee Miller

Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family by Paul C. Nagel

Diary of John Quincy Adams by John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams by Lynn H. Parsons

John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire by William Earl Weeks

John Quincy Adams and the Union by Samuel Flagg Bemis

John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit by James Traub

Letters Of John Quincy Adams, To His Son, On The Bible And Its Teachings by John Quincy Adams

Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams by William H. Seward

Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams by Margery M. Heffron

Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams by Josiah Quincy

The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters by Paul C. Nagel

The Presidency of John Quincy Adams by Mary W. Hargreaves

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin

The Best John Quincy Adams Book Lists Consulted

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