He was defense counsel for the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre, and only came to the revolutionary cause with some reluctance. John Adams was a mellow Massachusetts Puritan (he later became a Unitarian) whose father wanted him to be a minister, but he went to Harvard and became a lawyer instead. Of course, Miranda was writing a musical, not a biography, but seeing as how it appears that Hamilton is going to be this generation's Schoolhouse Rock, it's a shame if they come away with the impression that Adams was a petulant, inept one-term nobody, because he really wasn't. Now, I quite like Hamilton, but after reading this book, I really want to read Chernow's bio, because it's pretty clear that Miranda took some liberties. So, speaking of Ron Chernow, it was his biography of Alexander Hamilton that was the basis of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton. (Yes, Adams was POTUS #2 I started with Lyndon Johnson.) I don't know if any of them will live up to Robert Caro's LBJ epic, but David McCullough's biography of John Adams is certainly equal to Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington. That poor man, they’re gonna eat him alive!īook three in my journey through American history via presidential biographies. In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot - 'the colossus of independence,' as Thomas Jefferson called him - who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as 'out of his senses' and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history. The enthralling, often surprising story of John Adams, one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

David mccullough george washington