bookshelf

MR. ADAMS’S LAST CRUSADE

Name: MR. ADAMS’S LAST CRUSADE
Author: Joseph Wheelan
ISBN: 978-0-78672-012-5

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS’S EXTRAORDINARY POST-PRESIDENTIAL LIFE IN CONGRESS

by Joseph Wheelan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008

A convincing brief for reconsidering this prescient, fearless public figure.

bookshelf

Wheelan (Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846–1848, 2007, etc.) gently rehabilitates John Quincy Adams, who after one disastrous presidential term embarked on a long career as the conscience of Congress.

Eldest son of John and Abigail Adams, shapers of Revolutionary America, John Quincy (1767–1848) grew up under the aegis of Franklin and Jefferson, lived in Paris, attended Harvard and was appointed minister to the Netherlands at age 27 by President Washington. Yet he seemed to take pleasure in going against the grain; as his diplomatic career careened into politics, he continually alienated the parties that supported him. His rocky road to the presidency in 1824 was aided by a “corrupt bargain” struck with House Speaker Henry Clay, who threw his support to John Quincy in exchange for the post of Secretary of State. Andrew Jackson exacted his revenge in the election four years later, and Wheelan finally warms to his chilly subject once Adams lost his presidential job at age 61. Prone to depression, he took up writing poetry, until persuaded in 1831 to run for the House seat representing Plymouth, Mass. As the antislavery movement gained force in the 1830s, Congressman Adams introduced numerous petitions from citizens urging the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This became his cause célèbre when Congress, hogtied by the powerful Southern states, passed a gag rule that effectively restricted debate on slavery; Adams would fight for eight years to rescind it. He helped delay the annexation of Texas; represented the Amistad mutineers in the Supreme Court; and ensured that the endowment left by James Smithson would become the nation’s Smithsonian Institution. In later years, Adams became a living symbol, the last of the Enlightenment sages and an eloquent spokesman for those denied a voice in government: abolitionists, slaves, Indians and women.

A convincing brief for reconsidering this prescient, fearless public figure.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-78672-012-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
BLOODY OKINAWA
by Joseph Wheelan

- BOOK REVIEW
MIDNIGHT IN THE PACIFIC
by Joseph Wheelan

- BOOK REVIEW
THEIR LAST FULL MEASURE
by Joseph Wheelan

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)