Suggested Readings: John Adams

America's First Dynasty: The Adamses
By Richard Brookhiser
ISBN: 0-684-86881-4

"Having lived for half a century in the company of professional historians, I can honestly say that I have known only a handful who know enough to have done what Brookhiser has done, and scarcely any who would have done it with such wit and charm." — Forrest McDonald, author of E Pluribus Unum.

John Adams
By David McCullough
ISBN: 0-684-81363-7

"This big but extremely readable book is by far the best biography of Adams ever written. It may do for Adams's reputation what McCullough's last biography did for Truman's. This much underappreciated Founder would be pleased. He never expected posterity to honor him or erect a monument in his memory. It is about time that we did." — Gordon S. Wood, author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution.

John Adams And The Spirit of Liberty
By C. Bradley Thompson
ISBN: 0-7006-1181-9

"A remarkable achievement. Thompson gives us a fresh and lucid survey of John Adams's political writings and--something no scholar has done before--provides a thorough analysis of the contexts in which they were written. What is more, he offers a convincing description of Adams's thought processes. All in all, a superb study." — Forrest McDonald, author of Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution

Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
By Joseph J. Ellis
ISBN: 0-393-31133-3

Ellis draws "a captivating portrait of this Massachusetts native as a wonderfully contrary genius possessed of an uncommon moral intelligence and farsighted political wisdom." — Michiko Kakutani, Pulitzer Prize-winning book reviewer for the New York Times