num_pages: 466
description: John Quincy Adams was raised, educated, and groomed to be President, following in the footsteps of his father, John. At fourteen he was secretary to the Minister to Russia and, later, was himself Minister to the Netherlands and Prussia. He was U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and then President for one ill-fated term. His private life showed a parallel descent. He was a poet, writer, critic, and Professor of Oratory at Harvard. He married a talented and engaging Southerner, but two of his three sons were disappointments. This polymath and troubled man, caught up in both a democratic age not to his understanding and the furies of passion, was an American lion in winter.
language: English
title: John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
titlecomplete: John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
characters: John Quincy Adams
genres: Politics, American History, Us Presidents, American, Presidents, Biography Memoir, Biography, 19th Century, History, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 7707
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Minnesota Book Award
category: Autobiography & Biography
publisher: Harvard University Press