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John Adams exercised a breed of intellectual and political discernment that has perhaps become impossible in our day. David McCullough defines popular history for our generation.
Together, these two men—with heroic Abigail providing robust counsel both invited and otherwise—have placed in our hands a gripping and illuminating tale of what it meant to be a founding father when the thing they were founding was not at all clear.
McCullough’s Adams was petulant, headstrong, brilliant, and tenacious. Mostly tenacious. Perhaps tenacity can be labeled ‘stubbornness’ and considered a vice. But it was a good thing that some among the founders were so diseased. Adam kept on and on and on, harvesting thankless tasks that he executed out of a sense of duty that is almost inconceivable in a generation that so quickly conditions duty with another memorably phrased concept from Adams’ day though not Adams’ pen: the pursuit of happiness.
Even if you have no particular bent for colonial history but want to understand something of the uniqueness—our European friends like to call it ‘exceptionalism’—of America, read this book.
Perhaps America may yet be fortunate enough not to have seen the last of tenacious sages of Adams’ ilk. If so—and we stumble upon a senior politician (Adams would have found the concept repugnant)—as good, dutiful, and clear about his thoughts as Adams, what will we do with him?
Canter Bridge 
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