Henry Adams

by Ernest Samuels

Ernest Samuel's Pulitzer prize-winning, multivolume work on Henry Adams is now a compact, updated, one-volume biography.

Genres: Biography, American History

532 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

A scholar best known for his multi-volume biography of Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels earned both his Ph.B. (1923) and J.D. (1926) from the University of Chicago. After practicing law in Texas, Samuels returned to the University of Chicago and earned a master's degree (1931) and a Ph.D. (1942) in English. Samuels taught English at the State College of Washington (now Washington State University) from 1937 to 1939 and at Northwestern University from 1942 until his retirement as the Franklyn Bliss Snyder Professor of English in 1971.

Reviews

[Ivan Benedict · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very prolific writer, especially of history, but also letters and other subjects. He entertained many upper class politisions and friends. He often lived abroad ant traveled the globe. His lengthy travel to the Pacific islands is very interesting. He was a grandson of John Quincy Adams. Thé more I learned of him, the less I liked him.

[Ivan Stoner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This may be a good work of scholarship but it's a pathetic biography. My sense is that to write a biography of a thinker, you should engage with the thinker's thought. Or at the very least fall in love with him a little and give us a compelling drama. Samuels does neither.

This biography is content to report Adams' interactions with people, usually famous people, but without making it clear why those interactions are interesting, or why we should care.

How, for example, can Samuels write about Clover Adams' suicide with so little feeling? Clearly the event shattered Adams, but it carries as much emotional freight in this book as a political dinner with Grover Cleveland.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I read about three men who pioneered an era American intellectual enlightenment in the 1890s and early 1900s. I remember the names -- Henry Adams, Henry James and William James -- but the name similarities frustrated my efforts to remember who was who. Not being able to recall the source and to partially lessen my mental puzzlement I picked up this biography about Henry Adams. Interesting guy, he -- great grandson of President John Adams, grandson of President John Quincy Adams, a sometime journalist, literary historian, novelist, sometime professor, a peripatetic world traveler and host to "brains" who gravitated to his Washington, D.C., home near the White House to discuss art, science, geology, politics and literature. The first part of this book, his younger years, I found more interesting than the latter part. Author describes Adams has having an indefatigable pen, given to obsessive letter writing and as a master of metaphor and epigram. I think now that I should read some of his works and perhaps acquaint myself with the other Henry and the William.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

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