John Adams, John Ferling
John Adams, John Ferling
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

John Adams
A Life

Author: John Ferling

Narrator: Bob Souer

Unabridged: 20 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/13/2018


Synopsis

John Ferling has nearly forty years of experience as a historian of early America. The author of acclaimed histories such as A Leap into the Dark and Almost a Miracle, he has appeared on many TV and film documentaries on this pivotal period of our history. In John Adams: A Life, Ferling offers a compelling portrait of one of the giants of the Revolutionary era.

Drawing on extensive research, Ferling depicts a reluctant revolutionary, a leader who was deeply troubled by the warfare that he helped to make, and a fiercely independent statesman. The book brings to life an exciting time, an age in which Adams played an important political and intellectual role. Indeed, few were more instrumental in making American independence a reality. He performed yeoman's service in the Continental Congress during the revolution and was a key figure in negotiating the treaty that brought peace following the long War of Independence. He held the highest office in the land and as president he courageously chose to pursue a course that he thought best for the nation, though it was fraught with personal political dangers. Adams emerges here a man full of contradictions. He could be petty and jealous, but also meditative, insightful, and provocative. In private and with friends he could be engagingly witty. He was terribly self-centered, but in his relationship with his wife and children his shortcomings were tempered by a deep, abiding love.

John Ferling's masterful John Adams: A Life is a singular biography of the man who succeeded George Washington in the presidency and shepherded the fragile new nation through the most dangerous of times.

About John Ferling

John Ferling is a professor emeritus of history at the State University of West Georgia. A leading authority on American Revolutionary history, he is the author of a number of books, including Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800; The First of Men: A Life of George Washington; and the award-winning A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. His recent work Almost a Miracle was a history bestseller.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Micah on January 02, 2023

1st book of 2023 RTC......more

Goodreads review by Steve on September 08, 2017

[URL not allowed] "John Adams: A Life" is the fifth of nearly a dozen books authored by John Ferling, who has written extensively on the revolutionary era and several of its most important figures. This biography was first published in 1992 and has received consistently high ma......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on June 28, 2016

Ferling's biography offers an excellent perspective of John Adams. I read McCullough's better known bio a few months ago, and of the two, I slightly prefer Ferling's. McCullough's book is excellent, a page-turning, sweeping narrative that tells rather than analyzes John Adams' life. Ferling, while n......more

Goodreads review by Andy on January 17, 2025

Decent book with a lack of style or deep insight.......more

Goodreads review by Bill on October 26, 2020

It's kind of unfair to review one masterful work by comparing it to another masterful work. But since John Ferling's biography of John Adams will likely always be overshadowed by the success of David McCullough's, which appeared about a decade later, judging Ferling's work by comparing and contrasti......more