John Adams

By Anne Husted Burleigh

Book Overview

The rare man who can sift the unchanging out of a constantly changing world is a man for the ages. John Adams, philosopher of the Revolution and early America, and participant in many of the major events of that period, strove to find universal patterns in the lives of all men. His life and ideas are as pertinent to our time as they were to his own. We still ponder the nature of the unbreakable bond between liberty and law. As did Adams, we question how to relate the goal of freedom to the authority necessary in political society.Adams viewed man as a being of liberty subject to God's law. Th is colored his answer to the fundamental problem of how to reconcile liberty and law. His solution was not original. It was an answer rooted in the thought of classical Greek, Roman and English political philosophers. Moreover, it was the answer of a lawyer who, by his very profession, viewed man as an historian whose accumulated experience in history tells us about human nature. Because the principles of politics and human nature that he delineated are still relevant, Adams correctly shares a place as one of America's outstanding political thinkers.Burleigh gives us a warm, sensitive study of John Adams in the many roles he played during his eventful life: student, lawyer, polemicist, Founding Father, diplomat, President, husband, father. His own brilliance and the events of the times in which he lived combined to off er him the knowledge and fame he sought. Her new introduction explains our continuing interest in this central figure of the early years of the American Republic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1412810000
• ISBN13: 9781412810005
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 450 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Highly recommended, especially for political science and philosophy shelves

John Adams is more than a simple biography of the American Founding Father, philosopher of the Revolution, and second President of the United States. Also inherent in author Anne Husted Burleigh's study are a close analysis of Adams' political and philosophical beliefs, and the value his teachings have for today's modern society. Adams considered humans to be beings of liberty subject to God's law, and sought to balance liberty and law from that vantage point. The principles of politics and human nature that he outlined remain vividly relevant to this day. "Adams perceived sharply the intimate relation between liberty and property. He believed that without the right to acquire property, life and liberty are totally without protection and are mere abstract phrases. He believed that the right to property without liberty to acquire it is a term equally empty." Highly recommended, especially for political science and philosophy shelves.