225 Book Reviews
Book Reviews in 225 Words
Just the naked and unashamed truth
(Genesis 2.25).
James Grant
Farrar, Straus and GirouxPublishers
450 pages
Biographies are a like opinions. The first sounds good, until the next comes along. I don’t know how faithful this biography is in the study of Adams since I haven’t read any others. So, I’ll try to review the book as a stand alone, apart from the body of Adams study.
From a writing standpoint, John Adams is very readable. Every biography is difficult to write in such a way that it’s not dry. There are definitely some dry portions of this book, but they are rare. The main takeaway is that the reader gets a good sense of who John Adams the man was. Grant does a good job of presenting Adams flaws and all.
From a readability standpoint, this book is in-between a popular level book and an academic book. Grant cites notes copiously. In fact, there are 47 pages of notes. But, the notes are secondary and presented as endnotes.
I wonder at some of Grant’s theological presentations. When it comes to the Puritans, he seems to perpetuating a hostile and negative view of the Puritans as is often found in liberal academia. The text extols universalism and rejects traditional Christian orthodoxy.
3 out of 5 stars.
Comments (2)
Just last week I was at Books-a-Million browsing the biographies and was thinking that reading one on John Adams or John Q. Adams would be interesting. I don’t recall seeing this one in particular, though I’m thankful for this review. If I choose one, I may go with a different author.
B,
I wasn’t all that overly impressed with John Adams as a person. If this was a faithful biography, then I wouldn’t be interested in reading more about it. The only reason I would be interested in him would be from a study of the American Revolution perspective.