John Quincy Adams

Nagel has set out to explore his hero's inner life...It is a story told largely from the vantage point of the subject. Wall Street Journal Nagel offers a rich portrait of the moody and anxiety-ridden Adams...This biography remov[es] the dust from his portrait and restor[es] the glow of historical significance to his splendid and troubled life. Washington Post Paul C. Nagel focuses on the sources of Adams's curious mixture of duty and defiance...It is the character of the man, his personality, that dominates this biography...Nagel has given us a John Quincy Adams with a heart as well as a head. Los Angeles Times Book Review Nagel clearly knows his topic inside out, and his account of Adam's eventful life--from diplomat to professor to President--is eminently readable...This book is thoroughly engaging. We glimpse a side of Adams that he preferred to keep private: his eye for the ladies, his self-lacerating depressions, his contempt for what he referred to as the 'crazy' orations of Ralph Waldo Emerson...What emerges from Nagel's book is a more fully rounded character. -- Paul Giles Times Literary Supplement