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Title: The Education of Henry Adams (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry Adams, Ira Nadel ISBN: 0-19-282369-8 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.86 (29 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Adam's cynical view of U.S. history is amusing and brilliant
Comment: Dear Stefi, Now that there is a slight lull in the happy Chestertown merry-go-round, I want to write a paragraph or two explaining why is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. This is why it is so interesting: It was written about 1906 and covers U.S. intellectual and political history from about 1860 to 1906. What is clever about it is the cynical, humorous sophistication (very unAmerican) with which he, an insider, regards all of these events. The book, like Montaigne or Rousseau's is an autobiography and, like Montaigne, Adams is of the view that life should above all be amusing, so that any great enterprise should be undertaken only if it is indeed amusing. The driving idea of the book, however, is where to find the truth (you guessed it--he is still searching on the last page). The places where he searches are very intriguing. He begins at Harvard, where, says he, he learned nothing from books and only one thing from the classes: how to get up and talk in front of large crowds of people about nothing. He was required to do this routinely, and his speeches were, like everyone else's, greeted with hissing and criticisms, so he learned not to expect approbation from an audience. Adams got heavily into the debate about evolution (Darwin being the hot topic at the end of the nineteenth century), because he thought it was the main amusement of his era. His position on evolution is "reversion" rather than progress. One of his proofs is a comparison of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant. He admired Washington (a great general who became a great president); he voted for Grant (a great general). He knew personally the members of Grant's cabinet, thieves or incompetents at best. QED: things are getting worse not better. In his old age (sixty), after many other amusements of a busy lifetime, he decided to do what I did at the age of twenty-two: to visit all the important medieval French cathedrals. (In 1958, I bought a car in Saarbrucken--VW bug--and drove to seventeen of the greatest cathedrals, Guide Michelin in hand, staying at the youth hostels.) His book is peppered with well-digested quotations from French literature; he apparently knew it from top to bottom. His goal was to understand the Middle Ages (unity in the Virgin) and to write two books, one about the unity of the Middle Ages (title: ) and another about the diversity of the twentieth century, . Adam's book has a number of difficult spots (confusing original philosophy and historical references that mean something only to the well-informed historian), but the good parts are worth going on to find. I hope this vignette will persuade you to get through the boring chapters at the beginning of the book on his childhood in Quincy. The narrative becomes interesting only with his stories about the Court of Saint James where he spent his early twenties as a diplomat during the U.S. Civil War. From that point on, I think you will love it as much as I did. Cheers! Claire

Rating: 4
Summary: the bridge between the distant past and near past
Comment: Henry Adams managed to become a Modernist late in life. He was 62 years old at the turn of the century and a bit older when he wrote this memoir and yet his prose is crisp, direct and penetrating like that of Aldous Huxley rather like that of say Charles Dickens. I found myself re-reading passages of this books immediately after finishing them, purely to admire the beauty of expression. Adams is epigrammatic, conveying humor and wisdom with economy and an amazing sense of rhythm.

The content of this book is fascinating. His observations of 'New England character' early on are, to my mind, dead on, although it may be so that he actually invented this perspective on New Englanders. In either case it matches my post-Modern experience of the place and its people. Adams' insistence on treating all of life's events as either learning experiences or conscious wastes of time is an attitude that I suppose I've always had, but never 'brought to consciousness'. He is very tough on formal education, but one needs to be or it rapidly becomes a waste of time.

His application of the third person to his own self is very effective. He considers himself to have been essentially a pawn of history because of his pedigree. His use of this simple literary device detaches the character portrayed from the narrator and has the effect of leaving Adams adrift in the narrative of his own life. Other reviewers have actually complained that he does not deal with the suicide of his wife in this book. This is not true. He pointed stops the chronological narrative immediately before his marriage and picks it up several years later after she is dead. In a painful but enigmatic passage he describes daily visiting the statue that St. Gaudens designed for her grave and being angry that it has become a tourist attraction. There is much else expressed there, but I would have to re-read it to understand all of it, but I do know that the sadness is practically palpable on the page.

I can not say that I accept his 'law of history' related in the penultimate chapter of the book, but it has made me want to pick up his brother Brooks' book, The Law of Civilization and Decay, that has long sat on my shelf.

Rating: 4
Summary: Reflective
Comment: Since I like autobiographies and biographies I like this book. He lets you see what a aristocratic (but Chrisitan based) family was like in the days of the establishment of the United States as a country. He talks about travels, influences, and personal reflections.

Since the theme of his book is his personal education, a thought he has on that subject seems appropriate for a review. He writes, "Unless education marches on both feet--theoryand practice--it risks going astray..." That philosophy seems to be consistent throughout the generations. If you like to compare your thoughts with those reflective adventurers of other generations, you'll like this book.

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