Volume 23, Number 4 · March 18, 1976
Adamses: The 'Best' People I
By Gore Vidal
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
The Adams Chronicles: Four Generations of Greatness
by Jack Shepherd
Little, Brown, 448 pp., $17.50
John Adams: A Biography in His Own Words
edited by James Bishop Peabody
Harper and Row, 406 pp., $15.00
The Character of John Adams American History and Culture
by Peter Shaw
The University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early, 324 pp., $12.95
Adams: An American Dynasty
by Francis Russell
McGraw-Hill, 400 pp., $15.00
The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family 1762-1784
edited by L. H. Butterfield, edited by Marc Friedlaender, edited by Mary-Jo Kline
Harvard University Press, 411 pp., $15.00
The Inventors of the United States decided that there would be no hereditary titles in God's country. Although the Inventors were hostile to the idea of democracy and believed profoundly in the sacredness of property and the necessary dignity of those who owned it, they did not like the idea of king, duke, marquess, earl. Such a system of hereditary nobility was liable to produce aristocrats who tended to mix in politics (like the egregious Lord North) instead of good politically responsible burghers.
Review, 4244 words
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