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Title: The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography by Henry Adams, Donald Hall ISBN: 0-618-05666-1 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 27 April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.94 (31 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An uneven but rich take on a world in transition
Comment: Its funny how some reading experiences emcompass more than just the book itself. In the case of Henry Adams autobiographical essay collection, The Education of Henry Adams, I always think of a sunny day in the park. The first time I read the book I was still in High School and believed that I had an obligation to read all those books that had been identified as "classics". This was one. I read most of it one afternoon while sitting under a large oak tree in Shelby Park in Nashville, TN. I remember contrasting the gloom and pessimism of Adams thought with the sunny day and the optimistic prospects I believed the future held for me. I argued with him as I read. I thought his reaction to Darwin, for example, was misplaced and in bad faith. I thoroughly disagreed with his argument in the chapter "The Virgin and the Dynamo"; I felt I knew enough about the Middle Ages to prefer living in a time of electric lights, running water, medical science and imperfect democracy than in a hovel in some Medieval village dominated by King and the Roman Catholic Church. I dismissed Henry Adams as a whiner and an educated misfit who had nothing to say to me.
Its also funny how the passage of time changes one's perceptions. Rereading the book a couple of decades later I was surprised to find how much Adams and I had in common. I still didn't agree with his particular nostalgia for a time he had never experienced except in his imagination, but his sense of loss, of powerlessness, of the world slipping into some dangerous entropic state, all rang true to me. I also had read enough history of the 19th Century to appreciate more his many insightful anecdotes of the period. The subtlety of his humor and the richness of his writing style I also found appealing. I found this reading to be a much more rewarding experience - and I can't tell you a thing about where I was at the time, except deeply into the book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Reflective biography of the 19th century
Comment: As the grandson of America's sixth president, John Quincy Adams, and great grandson of America's second president, John Adams, Henry Adams was born to a distinguished New England heritage. His biography recounts the education he received, lamenting the inadequacy of formal schooling in preparing him to live ably during a century of revolutionary technological and philosophical change. Within his comments are wry insights that sometimes draw a smile from the reader, such as his definition of a schoolmaster: "A man employed to tell lies to little boys." Adams' views are rather cynical and somewhat fatalistic, but they do reflect the grand changes taking place during his lifetime. I read this book for a lit. class in college, and though most of my classmates found this book a little dull, I found it interesting enough to hold my attention.
Rating: 5
Summary: SEVENTY YEARS IN THE HISTORY OF A MIND!!!
Comment: This is an amazing document that chronicles seventy years in the history of a mind. Since the mind chronicled is that of Henry Adams (who is the son of congressman/diplomat Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of President John Quincy Adams, and the great grandson of President John Adams) it is of more historical value than most other biographical memoirs. The elucidation and harsh criticism that Adams lauds upon himself and the chaos of the world during the 19th and early 20th centuries is at once acute, biting, satiric, and warm with a fervent desire to see this country come of age in the new era of modern technological advances. Even though the subtitle of the book is "An Autobiography" Adams doesn't strive to tell the story of his life, but instead tells us the story of the development of his mental processes and of his ultimate conclusions after a lifetime of political, philosophical, and historical contemplation. As a result of this rigid excise of narrative the reader loses out on some of the man's more personal and intimate moments including the controversial absence of twenty years in which his marriage to photographer Clover Adams, her subsequent death by suicide (she poisoned herself with potassium cyanide), and the writing of his massive ten volume "History Of The United States" are completely omitted (although there are some references to the latter work in the text). But "The Education" as a whole is not hurt by this absence, and the twin chapters "Darwinism" and "The Dynamo And The Virgin" foretell a haunting future in which the unity of force as established by the Church, Christianity, and the majesty of the Virgin Mary is uprooted by Darwin's theory of evolution and the "power" of technology as represented by the energy dynamos Adams witnessed at the Paris exposition of 1900. After seeing the emergence of such technology and the chaos Darwinism caused he felt that the power of force as encapsulated by the Church had been thrown into such a chaos that it could never be righted again until a new man for a new age was capable of harnessing the forces of technology and forging a new future that would repair the damage done by the dislodging of Chruch and Christianity into the fiery sea of scientific philosophy and discovery. Although the pessimism of science without religion, and the disadvantage of religion without science is a fracture that must be remedied if both studies are to help explain the reality of our existence and give us hope in facing the nuclear/biological terrorism of the 21st century in which religion alone can't stop a bomb from being deflected and destroyed, and science alone can't provide an answer to the wickedness of a human heart hell-bent for power, greed, selfish gain, hedonistic pleasure, and rampant violence against all humanity. Adams' "theory of acceleration" is a bit difficult to understand, but boils down to a figure of numbers in which the advances in technology result in an acceleration of process and modification and availability of that technology until the latest research comes along to take us away on a voyage of new discovery (i.e. the development of computers which continued on a small scale, then were refined and marketed to the whole of society, then refined and made less expensive so that every household could afford to own one, and which is now being refined once again by the internet). This simultaneous looking forward and looking back is what makes "The Education" such a prophetic and groundbreaking work, and the reason for its ranking as the number one book of the 20th century by the Modern Library.
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Title: Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (Penguin Classics) by Adams ISBN: 0140390545 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1986 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Democracy by Henry Adams ISBN: 0452009421 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1983 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James ISBN: 0684842971 Publisher: Touchstone Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: Up from Slavery (Dover Thrift Editions) by Booker T. Washington ISBN: 0486287386 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Alexander Hamilton: A Biography by Forrest McDonald ISBN: 039330048X Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 October, 1982 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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