| The Education of Henry Adams | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 41 reviews)
Sales Rank: 193584
Category: Book
Author: Henry Adams
Publisher: bnpublishing.com
Studio: bnpublishing.com
Manufacturer: bnpublishing.com
Label: bnpublishing.com
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 212
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 9568530347
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.07202
EAN: 9789568530341
ASIN: 9568530347
Publication Date: November 18, 2007
Release Date: September 23, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK IN MP3 FORMAT.
Amazon.com Review
Many great artists have had at least intermittent doubts about their own abilities. But The Education of Henry Adams is surely one of the few masterpieces to issue directly from a raging inferiority complex. The author, to be sure, had bigger shoes to fill than most of us. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather were U.S. presidents. His father, a relative underachiever, scraped by as a member of Congress and ambassador to the Court of St. James. But young Henry, born in Boston in 1838, was destined for a walk-on role in his nation's history--and seemed alarmingly aware of the fact from the time he was an adolescent. It gets worse. For the author could neither match his exalted ancestors nor dismiss them as dusty relics--he was an Adams, after all, formed from the same 18th-century clay. "The atmosphere of education in which he lived was colonial," we are told, revolutionary, almost Cromwellian, as though he were steeped, from his greatest grandmother's birth, in the odor of political crime. Resistance to something was the law of New England nature; the boy looked out on the world with the instinct of resistance; for numberless generations his predecessors had viewed the world chiefly as a thing to be reformed, filled with evil forces to be abolished, and they saw no reason to suppose that they had wholly succeeded in the abolition; the duty was unchanged. Here, as always, Adams tells his story in a third-person voice that can seem almost extraplanetary in its detachment. Yet there's also an undercurrent of melancholy and amusement--and wonder at the specific details of what was already a lost world. Continuing his uphill conquest of the learning curve, Adams attended Harvard, which didn't do much for him. ("The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.") Then, after a beer-and-sausage-scented spell as a graduate student in Berlin, he followed his father to Washington, D.C., in 1860. There he might have remained--bogged down in "the same rude colony ... camped in the same forest, with the same unfinished Greek temples for workrooms, and sloughs for roads"--had not the Civil War sent Adams pere et fils to London. Henry sat on the sidelines throughout the conflict, serving as his father's private secretary and anxiously negotiating the minefields of English society. He then returned home and commenced a long career as a journalist, historian, novelist, and peripheral participant in the political process--a kind of mouthpiece for what remained of the New England conscience. He was not, by any measure but his own, a failure. And the proof of the pudding is The Education of Henry Adams itself, which remains among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature. It contains thousands of memorable one-liners about politics, morality, culture, and transatlantic relations: "The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest." There are astonishing glimpses of the high and mighty: "He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism..." (That would be Abraham Lincoln; the "melancholy function" his Inaugural Ball.) But most of all, Adams's book is a brilliant account of how his own sensibility came to be. A literary landmark from the moment it first appeared, the Autobiography confers upon its author precisely that prize he felt had always eluded him: success. --James Marcus
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| Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...
 Henry Adams was a great Teacher and a Romantic November 15, 2008
I was first drawn into the book "The Education of Henry Adams" when Henry Adams wrote how he was led to "... more than once to sit at sunset on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria di Ara Coeli..." (page 91) Adams wanted to teach people how we can teach ourselves. He wanted to say that knowledge devoid of feeling is of little use and meaning. He said, towards the end of the book and towards the end of his life, "All the teacher could hope was to teach it reaction." Despite his willful, self-imposed criticism of his own inadequacies and failures, he succeeded brilliantly in teaching us how to achieve our own personal Annunciation, as he obviously experienced his, at sunset on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria di Ara Coeli.
It took a while, but I ended up really liking it August 13, 2008
Note that this review is for the audio book narrated by David Colacci. I have been on a kick the last year or so of listening to the `classics' on my daily commute. This book has been on several lists of great books and I decided to give it a try. I started out wondering why this book would be considered so good, but after a few hours of listening I learned to appreciate the unique writing style and personality of the author.
The narrator was perfect for the part. His voice and manner of speaking fit the style of the book very well. He sounded just like I imagined Adams himself would have sounded if he had read this book.
I have always been a fan of history, and his perspective as a minor participant in several great events was fascinating. From the Civil War to the Teddy Roosevelt administration, he provided several interesting insights into those events. He knew many of the key players. His overriding theme of obtaining an `education' was also interesting and he looked at it much more broadly than most people would. He lived at a time of great technological change, especially from a perspective of power and seemed concerned that society was not ready to handle that much power. He saw the source of power switching from Christianity (The Virgin Mary) to the dynamo.
I initially didn't like him. He seemed almost too humble and didn't seem to have a strong opinion of right and wrong because he wasn't sure which was which. In the end I appreciated his perspective and thought he would have been an interesting person to know, though I wouldn't consider him as a great leader. I also would have liked to have him talk more of his personal life; note that this book omits the years 1872-1891, which would have included his marriage.
Overall I recommend this book for anyone interested in history and a unique literary style. He was clearly an intellectual and it gives a good snapshot of the intellectual views of that era.
 Poor printing job June 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this version and started reading it, but ended up buying another version. This version is poorly printed - the pages are overlarge for a paperback, and the margins at the spine are too narrow. Because of the width of the page it wasn't possible to read one line without moving my head, and since the book didn't lie flat I would have to peer into the spine area to get the last word on any line on the left hand page. Pick another version that's easier to read.
 The Education of Henry Adams May 30, 2008
The main problem I had with this book was the format. The 7-1/2X9-15/16" and the very narrow margins made reading difficult for me. I had to bend the binding back to read the end of a the very long line of text on the left page and the beginning of a line of text on the right. I also often had to use my finger to return the to the correct start of the next lenghty line. The truly made reading less enjoyable than it should have been. I suspect I would rate it higher in a more standard format book.
This will be one of my book club's readings this academic year and I can review it after the meeting within 12 months. I suspect many of us in the club will give it higher than 3 stars - which as I have indicated is marred by the difficulty in the physical (visual) reading.
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 Is the emperor wearing any clothes? February 1, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It took me a few months to grind my way through this, and I must conclude that unless you are a serious student of history--a professor or grad student, or highly-motivated undergrad--you are not going to get much out of this book.
I've got undergraduate and masters degrees (in computer science), am fairly widely read, and have a pretty good knowledge of history. Nevertheless, I usually could not figure out what Adams was getting at in his overly poetic abstractions. As other reviewers have pointed out, Adams can never simply describe concretely what he sees, but instead has to formulate some sort of generalization, as when the "dynamo"--a machine he sees at a World's Fair--becomes a symbol for the sweeping forces of mechanization and industrialization. That sounds insightful, but did he really need an entire chapter to describe how it upheaved his soul?
Adams wrote this book for his close circle of friends, not the general public. This manifests when he casually tosses around the names of obscure people without explaining who they are, as if we are just supposed to know. I often kept Wikipedia open as I read.
Unless you are already an expert on 19th-century U.S. history, be prepared for a hard slog and, I regret to predict, a lack of fulfillment.
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