The Education of Henry Adams - Henry Adams

Perhaps America's most famous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams chronicles the life of perhaps the last generation of true American aristocracy.  Son to an ambassador, grandson and great-grandson to presidents, of the Boston Adams, Henry Adams came of age during the explosion of the industrial revolution, served during the civil war and closes his narrative after the dawning of the new century and the birth of the age of Teddy Roosevelt.  Throughout the narrative is held together by Adams constant search for "education".


The prose sparkles most where we are given insights into Adams' impressions of politics, diplomacy and the great men of his time.  Witness the awkwardness and inward-focus of President Lincoln, the frustration of the American embassy in England or the stern presence of his grandfather President John Quincy Adams.  In his life Henry Adams serves as a bridge between the bygone days of the revolution and its characters, through the Civil War and into the twentieth century.

A constant theme of the work is Adams lamentations and confusions over the coming world of industry and technology.  One cannot help but identify with a man who feels the world passing him by; as speed, industry and global industrialization run-away with the future Adams wistfully wonders whether he isn't a man born to a time that has no place in the modern world.  In many ways he is the model for the modern American.  Striving, torn, in search of ideals perhaps forever out of reach - a model of what he would call the American character.

"The American thought of himself as a restless, pushing, energetic, ingenious person, always awake and trying to get ahead of his neighbors... [also, he is] a quiet, peaceful, shy figure, rather in the mold of Abraham Lincoln, somewhat sad, sometimes pathetic, once tragic; or like Grant, inarticulate, uncertain, distrustful of himself, still more distrustful of others, awed by money." p. 297