John Adams

I originally read this book over ten years ago. At that time, it kind of glazed over me and very little stick with me, honestly. This time, I was able to really take it in more. I also had the added benefit of trying something new: reading this concurrently with John Ferling's Adams biography. I'd read a chapter in Ferling (which, before McCullough, had been the most authoritative and popular Adams biography), and then read through the same time period in McCullough, then go back to Ferling.

It was a fascinating exercise and well worth the time if you're able to do it. It highlighted all the more both the strengths and weaknesses of both biographies.

At its core, Ferling's biography is an examination of the psychology and world of John Adams. So while you get a greater and more penetrating view of the man himself, many of the more interesting bits of his life are compressed or skimmed over if Ferling believes it didn't have all that much of a shaping effect on Adams's own self.

McCullough, on the other hand, seems to be more a biography written by a fanboy, and not in a bad way! He is still scholarly and measured, even in the face of Adams' faults, though he can romanticize and infuse some events with more drama than they deserve. This takes for riveting reading, though, and makes things more enthralling.

While Ferling does deep dives into colonial life and it's cities, as well as historical events like the Boston Tea Party, McCullough minimizes these things and sticks almost exclusively to the things John was experiencing. Whereas the former book offered a huge moment by moment recounting of the Boston Tea Party, for example, McCullough offers one sentence in reference to it–because Adams had no role in it and was not there. While Adams is overseas, McCullough spends most of his time with Adams without jumping back and lingering on life for Abigail and his kids back home.

While this leaves some holes in the story, it does allow space to zoom in and sit with some incredible moments in Adams' life, like his meeting with King George or the road trip he and Thomas Jefferson took before their relationship fell apart–both moments that occupy many pages in McCullough, but warrant single line references in Ferling.

I said this book was written by a fanboy of John Adams, and not in a bad way. It reads like a bunch of old friends of John Adams sitting around a table after he is dead and them going back and forth telling the old stories of the most interesting times of his life–moments and events that may not themselves have shaped Adams all that profoundly, but nonetheless are funny or intriguing in their own right.

I only have two big criticisms. First, because it focuses so tightly on certain events, it keeps having to backtrack in time to explore other themes or other things that were going on concurrently with the story he was just telling. This can lead to some confusion about exactly where you are in the timeline of Adams' life. McCullough has a strange writing tick where he will at times write about something and then go back in time to tell you something he did not tell you about back then that might shed light on the current event, or jump forward in time to tell you about a thing that will be coming in the future that might connect to the thing he's talking about now. Maybe it was just because I was jumping between two books, but this could make it confusing.

My second criticism is that McCullough really overly romanticizes John and Abigail's relationship. Whereas Ferling can directly say that Adams was a terrible spouse to his wife (which he was), McCullough really wants to make John and Abigail Adams into one of America's foremost romance stories in history. Generally, he does not shy away from the faults and failings of John Adams, but this is an oversight for sure.

Nevertheless, it's a fun read, comprehensive and scholarly for sure. There's a reason it is the most popular John Adams biography around. It does deserve that for its scope, clarity, and prose. Definitely worth a read.