A âmarvelousâŠcompellingâ (The New York Times Book Review) biography of literary icon Henry Adamsâone of Americaâs most prominent writers and intellectuals, who witnessed and contributed to the United Statesâ dramatic transition from a colonial society to a modern nation.
Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished familyâafter great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adamsâto gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist.
Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these powerful men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era.
âThoroughly researched and gracefully writtenâ (The Wall Street Journal), The Last American Aristocrat details Adamsâs relationships with his wife (Marian âCloverâ Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adamsâs lettersâthousands of themâdemonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widowerâs existence.
Offering a fresh window on nineteenth century US history, as well as a more âmodernâ and âhumanâ Henry Adams than ever before, The Last American Aristocrat is a âstandout portrait of the man and his eraâ (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
