The Education of Henry Adams

what can you tell me about this book? have you read it? do you recommend it? what did you think?

i'm recently taking another crack at it, after failing once or maybe twice to get very far in the past. but i'm having trouble staying motivated, and i can no longer remember what it was that compelled me to seek out this book so many years ago.

i figure that hearing what you all got out of henry adams might help me make a decision to persist or move on.

please also share relevant quotes, articles, books, etc. ✌️

I survived a 2010 Adams phase when writing my thesis. I had a better time with his history of the Jefferson-Madison administrations: acerbic, fulsomely researched (even by the eh standards of the time), and ironic in a not-curdling manner. I read a good bio in 2020.

the David S. Brown one?

That's it.

A fascinating anti-Semite who had the privilege to indulge his dilettantish pursuits, Adams loved and resented politics because he thought presidents considered him way too smart to serve, which suited him fine because then he could carp at the philistines and troglodytes from the safety of his bulwark across from the White House.

I've only read his novels, Democracy, good DC satire, and---also looking askance, but more complex as I recall, Esther---publisher's description:

Esther -- originally published in 1884 under a female pseudonym -- is the story of Esther Dudley, a young painter, who meets a clergyman, Stephen Hazard of St. John's in New York City. At first she recoils from him, owing to his preoccupation with ministry and her radical views imbibed from her moribund father. When Esther receives a commission to renovate the decorations of the church, however, Stephen becomes an admirer of her painting and a friend to her ailing father. Esther finds herself drawn to the clergyman and, after her father's passing, even becomes engaged to him. But can she surrender her moral independence to marry him? A memorable portrait of a woman in an agonizing transition, Esther is also an insightful portrait of a confident age encountering the tensions among science, art, and religion.

Democracy invented the DC novel in which Vidal and Thomas Mallon specialize(d).

Haven't yet read Vidal's DC novels, did enjoy Mallon's Henry and Clara, about the real-life younger folk on a double date w Mary and Abe, that night at Ford's---what others of his should I read?

HBO adapted Fellow Travelers his most poignant. I like thr Reagan novel too.