No, not the football team, I mean the real deal. The men, and, to be fair, the women, who carved these United States. Not the land, the borders, or the money, but rather the ideas. Or should I say ideals? For rather than throwing off the yoke of an empire, it was these that made the American Revolution truly revolutionary.
I just finished David McCullough’s masterpiece John Adams. No words I put to paper here could ever do it justice. The book is easily one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced. What happened over the centuries that killed whatever it was that fueled these great individuals? In addition to the titular character, we have Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and, the most awesome of them all, George Washington. Do we have anybody who could even hold a candle to any of these men today?
In addition to the incredible story of an amazing man, John Adams is, at its heart, a love story. The incredible relationship he had with his wife, Abigail, in inspiring. His complete intellectual and emotional equal, she was always his best friend and most trusted adviser. McCullough's ability to capture this love, and its importance to the man who wrote what became the precursor to our Constitution, is masterful.
I’ve always been a glutton for the American Revolution, and this quenched my thirst for it in a way no near-starved man could ever appreciate. At the same time, it rekindled the fire for more. I can’t help but think of the copy of 1776, also by McCullough, sitting on the bookshelf in my spare bedroom. Can a mind salivate? I say yes.
3 comments:
McCullough is a master of showing us who the individual is using their private writings and diaries. History too often emphasizes the events through the Newspaper perspectives, forgetting that real people with real emotions played the parts. While have I just started John Adams, it is already painting the most amazing picture of our founders and what they were like in their hearts, especially John and his relationship with Abigail. As I am reading, I am starting to see McCullough's point that the Abigail and John relationship was a love story for the ages and quite possibly one of the greatest American love stories ever. 1776 was a classic for sure and got me hooked on McCullough. These should be mandatory readings in Founding Father studies.
Cool that your reading the same stuff. Just incredible. John Adams was like a life-changing kind of read.
You said titular.
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