Samuel Adams: A Life
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- ISBN13: 9780743299121
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In this stirring biography, Samuel Adams joins the first tier of founding fathers, a rank he has long deserved. With eloquence equal to that of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, and with a passionate like of God, Adams helped place a match to the flame of liberty and made sure it glowed even during the Revolution’s darkest hours. He was, as Jefferson later experimental, “truly the man of the Revolution.”
In a role that many Americans have not fully appreciated until now, Adams played a pivotal role in the events leading up to the bloody confrontation with the British. Believing that God had willed a free American nation, he was among the first patriot leaders to call for independence from England. He was ever the man of action: He saw the opportunity to stir things up after the Boston Massacre and helped plot and instigate the Boston Tea Party, though he did not really participate in it. A fiery newspaper editor, he railed relentlessly against “taxation lacking representation.”
In a relentless blizzard of articles and speeches, Adams, a man of New England, argued the urgency of revolution. When the top British all-purpose in America, Thomas Gage, offered a all-purpose amnesty in June 1775 to all revolutionaries who would lay down their arms, he excepted only two men, John Hancock and Samuel Adams: These two were destined for the gallows. It was this pair, leader Ira Stoll argues, whom the British were pursuing in their fateful march on Lexington and Concord.
In the tradition of David McCullough’s John Adams, Joseph Ellis’s The Founding Brothers, and Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin, Ira Stoll’s Samuel Adams vividly re-makes a world of thoughts and action, reminding us that none of these men of courage knew what we know today: that they would prevail and make history anew.
The thought that especially inspired Adams was religious in scenery: He believed that God had intervened on behalf of the United States and would do so as long asits citizens maintained civic virtue. “We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection,” Adams insisted. A central thesis of this biography is that religion in large part motivated the founding of America.
A gifted young historian and newspaperman, Ira Stoll has written a gripping tale about the man who was the revolution’s moral conscience. Sure to be discussed widely, this book reminds us who Samuel Adams was, why he has been slighted by history, and why he must be remembered.
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Ira Stoll, a failed newspaper editor of the neo-conservative and defunct New York Sun, tried his hand at history in this “biography” of Samuel Adams. In this, like the Sun, he failed dramatically.
Hardly a biography of the oft forgotten revolutionary, “Samuel Adams – A Life” would be more aptly titled “Religious Fundamentalism in Revolutionary America.” The message of the book is as biased as it is heavy handed – Sam Adams, like many revolutionaries, was a religious man, and so too should we all be.
In fact, if Stoll is to be believed, Adams was first and foremost on a quest of religious, not civil, liberties. All additional rights, including persons of free press, speech, assembly, etc., were secondary and sometimes unnecessary byproducts of a church uncontrolled by the state but seemingly compulsory to its citizens.
The problem with this assessment of Adams is that it’s incredibly misleading. Stoll takes pains to quote Adams nearly exclusively referring to God and the bible, most notably relying heavily on his pseudonym, “The Puritan.” He mentions a number of others, but fails to point out the secular scenery of many of their tones.
Also, he equates Adams’ (and many additional revolutionary leaders’) metaphor of Americans as modern Israelites as undeniable proof of his devotion to a Christian nation. The problem with this example, which he draws on regularly, is that it’s easily disputed within the context of 18th century America. Descriptions from the bible were common in politics regardless of the speaker or leader’s devotion simply because it was a reference the public would know. The revolutionary era was a period nearly really devoid of its own literary traditions, and its population, regularly uneducated and certainly not well-read, was familiar with the bible. To tell to persons characters was no different from American moderns building allusions to Shakespeare. While this doesn’t really discount Adams’ religious references, it certainly should be considered, and would have been had the book been authored by a trained historian and not a mediocre journalist with an overwhelmingly clear agenda.
Another rather annoying thread throughout the book is the referencing of Harvard. Much like when Stoll quotes religious references that aren’t significant to what he’s talking about, he identifies nearly every Harvard alum in the book upon their introduction, regardless of whether or not it matters. He does not show the same enthusiasm for graduates of additional schools, presumably because he didn’t graduate from another school. His own attachment to Harvard seems to compel him to identify all additional graduates, suggesting they’re all part of the same intellectual fraternity.
In addition to being rather vain, the association with Harvard really hurts his argument. While trying to identify revolutionary leaders with religious vehemence, he associates them with a college which at the time of their attendance was the first school in America to step away from religion in favor of sciences.
Inaccuracies are also rather common in the book. Immediately in the introduction, the leader refers to Dr. Joseph Warren, who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill, as having had his head cut off and taken by the British as a trophy. This rather sensational tale is not only unfounded, but impossible, as Warren’s body was identified by dental records, one of the first such examples of early dental identification recorded. He also insists on calling Thomas Hutchinson Lt. Administrator in incidents in the works after 1769, at which point be became Acting Administrator. Meanwhile, Thomas Cushing, who was Acting Administrator following Administrator Hancock’s departure, is simply called “administrator.”
It also seems that Stoll, a native of Massachusetts, is unfamiliar with the city’s historic sites. He refers to The Ancient South Meeting House as “Ancient South Church,” presumably to capture a more religious feeling. The problem is that the Ancient South Church is a completely separate building that was built in the 19th century, long after the revolution. Further, in references to the same building, he calls it by a different name, “the Ancient Brick Meeting House.” He also implies that the meeting leading to the Tea Party was held at Ancient South partially because of its religious position within the community, and not simply because it was the largest meeting house available. The meeting was stirred from the secular Faneuil Hall due to the large crowd.
All in all, this book is nearly unreadable. The only redeeming qualities are written by others and unabashedly block quoted by the leader, comprising at least half of the entire work.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The type is so small I cannot read this book, is why I purchased it is to read>
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Three of the six items in this shipment were hurt due to poor packing. All were gifts. This and the Andrew Jackson book were laying flat on the bottom of the box which was not wide enough. The open side of each book was pushed against the additional, causing at least 30 pages of each book to be bent. The outer take in of this book had a 2 inch tear. There were 2 dirty fingerprints on the page edges.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I keenly awaited the publication of this new biography of Sam Adams, hoping at last some new primary research would have uncovered more personal information on the life of this crucial founding father. I was very disappointed to find that this book is nothing but an amalgamation of quotations from the research of others awkwardly pieced together. There are a number of far better written introductions in print and others available in most libraries – Mark Puls biography, in paperback, is certainly better written for a start. Samuel Adams deserves the kind of full scale in depth treatment his cousin John Adams received from McCullough but that kind of book remains to be written.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Samuel Adams has been one of my favorite Founding Fathers since first reading about him in PATRIOTS by A.J. Langguth. Adams pushed on for liberty and freedom while most Americans simply wanted to make peace with their mother-country and pay obeisance to King George.
I establish this book to be very informative of the life and work of Sam Adams, but the writing style wasn’t nearly as excellent as McCullough’s book. The leader wrote more of the dry facts and facts of the man than the man himself.
Having no military experience before the American Revolution, Samuel Adams single-handedly proved that the pen is mightier than the sword. He wrote relentlessly, pressing for unbridled liberty month after month, year after year. He spoke and wrote fearlessly about independence while others hadn’t even dreamt of it yet.
Adams also is unmatched in proving that liberty is inexorably tied to religion, something that most people today don’t seem to know (much less agree with), and our politicians scorn. When people govern/control themselves as individuals, only then can they have limited local/state/national government.
Here was a man no military experience, yet he ongoing and led one of the greatest revolutions of all time. His thoughts and ideals of liberty and limited government led to our Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution of the United States.
All in all, I thought the book was excellent, but I will probably use it more for reference-reading than for entertainment.
My Books: The Cell, The Time of Jacob’s Distress, Endeavor in Time
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5