This biography of the cranky JQA and his gentle wife, Louisa Catherine, got off to a good start. It opens with a vivid account of their wedding at the church of All Hallows Barking. Unfortunately, Shepard never delves deep enough into the volatile relationship between the president and his "fine lady." I was left wondering WHAT exactly they felt for one another. Did they love one another, despite the pain each inflicted? I think so....but this biography does not provide the answer. The hauntingly beautiful quote that the title is taken from says more than the entire book: "It was a marriage of light to shadow, of spring to winter, of heart to cannibal..." There are some good moments toward the end. The description of an aged JQA's triumphant tour through the states he loved is fantastic (his disgusted daughter-in-law got sick of the cheering crowds and went home!) I would reccomend Paul Nagel's "Descent from Glory" over this.

This book kept me up late night after night! Jack Shepherd is a good storyteller, and goes into the background of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine to help us understand why they became the people they did. (I had no idea that John Quincy was a frustrated party guy who roamed the Boston Common at night!)

He also goes into great detail, describing society during each of John Quincy's diplomatic posts, so that we feel like we're part of that era. I also learned a lot of history, and have a better appreciation for the fragile democracy that existed between the American Revolution and the Civil War.

The first part of the book is especially lively, describing their courtship and wedding. I thought the book lost a little steam at the end (or maybe I was losing steam, since they lead such full lives!) I agree that the book leaves me wanting more, only because it focuses more on their personal lives, rather than John Quincy's career, which I want to explore more now.

I definitely recommend this book as an easy-to-read and well-researched document about two Americans who sacrificed so much of themselves for their country, yet have been forgotten.

This biography succeeds in its evenhanded portrayal of John Wayne. No doubt some will criticize it because Davis doesn't spend his time eschewing Wayne's politically incorrect opinions, but neither does the author lionize Wayne the man. What you have left is a concise and readable 400 page biography that covers all the movies and all the wives. Davis gives his opinions as to why the Wayne legend still survives, and what his fellow actors thought of him way back when.

Interesting is the story behind the making of the ALAMO, a film he produced, directed and starred in, the subsequent Oscar campaign, and the aftermath. Also interesting is Wayne's relationship with director John Ford, whom he loved, and their disagreements.

Though very in-depth in explaining each movie John Wayne appeared, the book lacks somewhat in explaining who John Wayne was. In comparison, Donald Dewey's recent biography of Jimmy Stewart gives the reader a more detailed examination of Stewart than Ronald Davis does of Wayne. Ronald Davis also relies too much on the self-centered Pilar Wayne, the third Mrs. John Wayne, for anectdotal information. Davis's use of interviews with Harry Carey, Jr. are quite valuable and illuminating. It's a shame that Davis didn't thoroughly interview other actors who shared the screen with Duke, including Ron Howard, about whom Duke thought highly or Kim Darby (Mattie in True Grit), who didn't like the Duke (remember, True Grit was filmed in 1968). Mr. Davis does an excellent job explaining Duke Wayne's desert years in the thirties doing one-reel westerns. One has to admire Wayne's persistance. One note Pilar Wayne reveals through Ronald Davis that puts Wayne in a very bad light and has changed my personal views toward him to the strongly negative, was Duke Wayne's insistance that a pregnant Pilar get an abortion. The baby was inconvenient as Duke was in the divorce court with number two wife Chata in a highly charged divorce battle. The baby was killed but Duke Wayne received a fairly good divorce settlement. A conservative icon, when the chips were down, was capable of a selfish, dishonest, sordid, dirty act. The Duke was a great actor and icon but was not a good person. He was not a great American.

--Derek Leaberry

Brookhiser's book about the Adams family takes a look at four generations of the Adamses and discusses their contributions to American history. While this book does offer some minor insights, it is flawed in a number of ways.

First of all, thematically, this book is weak. While John Adams and John Quincy Adams are important figures in history, Charles and Henry are really much more footnotes. Nonetheless, Brookhiser gives each figure equal weight, while it is clear that - like most dynasties - the glory rarely lasts beyond the second generation. And with all the discussion he gives to the later Adamses, he only peripherally discusses John's important cousin, Samuel Adams.

Not as glaring but more problematic is Brookhiser's occasional distortion of history and his imperfect objectivity. A couple examples: he refers to James Buchanan as a definite homosexual, while the evidence is far from clear on that subject. He also incorrectly states the chronology of the 1824 election: John Quincy Adams did not offer Clay the Secretary of State position until after he was elected.

At best, this book is half good, primarily as an introduction to John and John Quincy, both of whom have much better biographies available. Otherwise, this book is skippable.

Richard Brookhiser doesn't write 'biographies' in the conventional sense -- and certainly not in the modern sense, in which writers seem determined to prove that once-admired historical figures are just as messed up as the rest of us, and probably even worse. No, what Brookhiser attempts to do (as I believe he noted in 'Founding Father,' his book about George Washington) is reclaim the ancient idea of biography as a means of understanding and exploring ideas about civic virtue, citizenship, and (dare we say?) morals.

This isn't to say that Brookhiser whitewashes his subjects. Far from it: his subjects come through in this book both as sharply defined individuals and as members of a family with a very clear sense of itself and its place in history. That he chooses not to bog himself down in domestic minutia doesn't detract from the quality of the biography, and enhances the points he's trying to make.

If this book were a novel, cover blurbs would breathlessly proclaim it 'the sweeping saga of an American family across four tempestuous generations.' And the description wouldn't be far wrong. From the time of the Founding until the First World War, the Adams family was (to varying degrees at various times, but always to some extent) among the most prominent, influential, respected, and reviled families in America. Brookhiser does a fine job showing how four individual members of this family bore that inheritance, and shaped, and were shaped by, what it meant to be an Adams. If 'the contract of the [American] founding ... was a contract with their family' (p. 199), the family had contractual obligations in return. Many Adamses chose not to fulfill those 'obligations.' But the four who most notably did, did so with one eye on their times and the other on their patrimony.

The four biographies are fascinating in their own rights. But the section of the book I most enjoyed was the final four chapters, in which Brookhiser weighs one Adams against another and against some of the perennial questions of American civic life -- most notably the question of Republic versus Empire. It's here, especially, that Brookhiser shows how the lessons of the Adams dynasty apply to our own times as well as theirs.

The most obvious appeal of 'America's First Dynasty' is to students of political history. But it also bears reading for the light it shines on current political, constitutional, and cultural questions, and for the recurring dilemma of the family in American political life. For if the supermarket tabloids still label a certain other political/media clan as 'America's royal family,' it's worth remembering that they're not the first nor, by any stretch, the most important. This book is definitely worth a read.

When reading "America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918" one reads the sweep of 150 years of American history through the eyes of America's first dynastic family.

The Adamses, their quarrels, their prejudices, and their crazy ideas, (John Adams thought the new nation would soon turn to a hereditary monarchy), are put into the context of the times for the modern reader to absorb. The result is a remarkably readable book sized for today's attention span.

In the section on Henry Adams, the writer, historian and great grandson of John Adams, our second President, we get a glimpse of the perspective that being an heir to history can bestow on someone willing to accept it when Richard Brookhiser writes about Adams' book "History of the United States in the Administration of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison." The following excerpt includes portions of "History..." as well as Brookhiser's own synopsis of the book.

"America invited men to partake of a national wealth that was as yet mostly uncreated; the openness of the offer tapped reservoirs of energy and devotion. 'The poor came, and from them were seldom heard complaints of deception or delusion. Within a moment, by the mere contact of a moral atmosphere, they saw... the summer cornfields and the glowing continent.' America's natural resources were not gold or coal, but opportunity and the people the opportunity attracted."

Brookhiser has written a fine book. I am now compelled to read his other works.

As an instructor I felt the book was very good, but the students could not use the software on excel 97 or above. It was really frustrating, and I will not use it next semester.

This is an excellent book for chefs to be. It gives in detail how to design a decent menu. But the price I paid for it is way to much. I picked up the book in our school bookstore, Lambton College, in Sarnia, Ontario Canada. It cost me 102.95 plus GST Tax.

This is an above average field guide, but the writing is sometimes so dry that while reading you may feel as if you are hiking through death valley, not Mammoth or the Ritter Range. The map that comes with it is fantastic, although, it comes from the 1920's surveys of the area.

In some ways one could use the word "transmission" instead of "imputation" for those who can't get their heads around the legal terminology common in Reformed theologians. This book attempts to examine how Adam's sin is credited to the entire human race, thus imputation. The book is dry and a lot of work to read. The theological concepts themselves are not so difficult to grasp as Murray's wooden prose. Unless you're willing to navigate hard-core Reformed theological writings in a stuffy mid-20th century academic style I'd recommend Henri Blocher's scholarly but far more readable Original Sin as a primer for Murray's ideas and for a thoughtful critique of some of their limitations.

That's an autobiography, right? No, in this case, this book is truly what it says it is: James Bishop Peabody edits a collection of original source material, puts it all in chronological order according to the events it is discussing, rather than the order in which it was written, and provides connecting and explaining paragraphs of his own. What we are left with is truly a biography rather than an autobiography; Peabody really should get the credit as author, rather than editor. Still, probably 2/3 to 3/4 of the book is actually written "in his own words": excerpts from his incomplete autobiography, his correspondence, and his diary entries detailing his life in very thorough and exhaustive detail.

The book is a bit dry, and because it is in Adams' own words, its style is somewhat archaic, so it may not be for the general reader. But for the amateur historian who would like a close look at the source material, it's marvellous.

Anyone picking up this book should know from the start that this is as about as unobjective a biography as one is bound to find. Henry Adams has multiple scores to settle, on behalf of John Adams and John Quincy Adams (his great-grandfather and grandfather, respectively), with John Randolph of Roanoke (who never had a kind word for either of the Adams presidents). The reader would be strongly advised to read both the introduction by Robert McColley, as well as the notes on the text (located at the end of the book) which deals with specific matters of interpretation in the book.

Adams uses this book to savage Randolph at every opportunity. The bulk of the book follows Randolph in his congressional career up through 1806, when he broke with the Jefferson administration over the administration's attempt to pay France two million dollars to secure Western Florida from Spain. Up until 1806, as Adams puts it, Randolph was the "spoiled child of his party and recognised mouthpiece of the administration." (p. 118) Randolph was in the thick of things up to that point, including the Louisiana Purchase, the approval of which he helped shephard through the House of Representatives. He was also given the responsibility for the February 1805 impeachment of Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. At that point in history, the question of the Executive Branch's authority over the Judicial Branch was far from settled. A successful prosecution of Justice Chase might well have changed the history of Executive-Judicial relations, but Randolph botched the job thoroughly. Adams can barely contain his glee when describing how unequal to the task Randolph was.

The bungled Chase impeachment increasingly made Randolph an embarrassment to the Jefferson administration. Randolph's political prospects were damaged beyond repair after 1806, and from that point on, as he became increasingly erratic, was on the periphery of the American political scene. He quarrelled, at one point or another, with every administration from Jefferson to Andrew Jackson. Adams devotes only 70 pages to Randolph's life from 1806 until his death in 1833. It is evident at this point that Adams is more interested in directing criticism at Jefferson and his successors in the Virginia Dynasty than he is at studying the life of Randolph.

Adams does make good points in his book, especially regarding the notions of states' rights. Coventional wisdom holds that Randolph was one the early advocates of the states' rights philosophy that John C. Calhoun subsequently embraced, but Adams argues persuasively that actions such as the Louisiana Purchase and the protection by the federal government of slavery (such as the Fugitive Slave Act) were in themselves encroachments on the rights of individual states and helped further the centralization of government in the United States. Far from being a traditional states' rights advocate, Adams contends, Randolph did a great deal to undermine the notion of states' rights as it existed in 1789.

Despite the rather venomous nature of the book, it is none the less a wonderful piece of literature that is worth reading. Adams' skills as a writer are evident throughout. The three stars represents a dual rating: 5 stars for the quality of the writing, 1 star for the utter lack of objectivity...although what could the reader seriously expect anyway?

There have been two instances of a father and son both achieving the presidency of the United States and there is a common characteristic. In each case one of the two had a distinguished history of public service that would indicate excellent preparation for the rigors of being president. However, both of those men served only one term, voted down amid lackluster support even among those who were their natural political allies.
George Bush senior was a combat aviator in world war two, served in congress, was head of the CIA and was vice president for eight years. And yet, his presidency is generally considered to have been more of a caretaker administration than anything else. He came dangerously close to coming in third in the election where he was defeated by Bill Clinton. John Quincy Adams served his nation well as an ambassador to Europe during some of the most troubling early years of the nation. A distinguished public figure in many other ways, it certainly appeared that he was well prepared for the presidency. However, his administration was also rather lackluster and it too has the appearance of a caretaker government.
Despite the relative lack of major events during the four years of the John Quincy Adams administration, Hargreaves manages to fill 323 pages. This attention to excruciating detail makes the book difficult to read and it is by far the least interesting of the eight books in the American presidency series that I have read. To put this into perspective, the eight years of the Andrew Jackson presidency are summarized in 277 pages and the four years of the Van Buren administration in 211. Detailed explanations of minor legislative debates and the personal relationships between the principles are presented to the point that they just become tedious.
All of this in unfortunate, because John Quincy Adams was a very interesting man who tried to uphold the principles of democracy as he saw them. The problem of course was that the nation was changing. He was the last president with roots to the old statesman/gentleman mold of men that created the nation and the constitution. Adams was constantly fighting the populist movement of Andrew Jackson, with the appeal to the masses that was so different from the presidential politics that had come before. This point is mentioned in the book, but unfortunately all the detail tends to bury it.
The presidency of John Quincy Adams marks a turning point in the history of the United States. After him, presidents were elected by political campaigns with mass appeal rather than the collective will of a relatively small number of people. Furthermore, they were no longer chosen from a group of aristocratic gentleman, as rough hewn self-made men were now viable candidates. This point is made in the book, but not as well as it should and certainly not as precisely as it could have been.

This book has a lot of problems: the title is completely misleading; there's far too little useful information; and overall it's very short in length.

Within the first five minutes of opening the book you realize that the editors really did a good job of misleading the buyer/reader. The "Complete" Guide to Audio? Uh, No. There was nothing "complete" about it. The title should be "A Brief Introduction to Audio". Take a couple of minutes and have a look at a different book, Robert Harley's "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio". You'll learn real fast what "complete" means.

For a beginner, there was some useful audio information: the author does a decent job of explaining the basics of sound, speakers, etc. However, there was just too little of this and he really just scratches the surface without going any deeper. I'd say, for every ten pages, there was one page of meaningful information. Way too much fluff.

Even with all the fluff, the book is still way too short. (162 pages, which could have fit in half that space.) As I said, just have a look and compare it to Robert Harley's book, "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio".

The basics of hifi equipment is clearly explained and the progression of sound systems from stereo to surround sound is clearly compiled, however these basics don't go beyond the very basics like what is a sub woofer and what components are needed for dolby digital sound.

In the preface the author does state that this book was written for the consumer and for people that want to know more about sound.Firstly, this is an understatement unless this definition of consumer is one of someone who has never seen a hifi of any kind - let alone has switched one on. Secoundly if one wanted to know more about sound, enough so that you'd buy a book on the subject, then frustration would be what one would be left with.

Initially sound systems may seem daunting, but save your money and set aside a few hours to compile all the basic questions you have on sound systems and then search the net. You'll get far more than this surface treatment. "A basic intoduction to sound and a basic overview of sound systems"

About 4-5 months ago, I decided to take the plunge and invest in some new audio components. Though a few of the components I owned had been considered bottom level high end, I wanted to go the separate amplifier/tuner route with a new cd player and a new pair of modern day speakers. In other words, kick it up a notch. Partial to European components, I discovered the British publications HI FI Choice and What Hi Fi? Great glossy photos,with Excel/Powerpoint graphic charts rating different components by category.Very instrumental in assisting me purchase my tuner,amp,headphones and cables.But now I thirsted for more. I was hooked, a true audiophile was blossoming. There had to be a book somewhere. Much to my surprise one of the largest book chains here in the Northwest, who usually retails more shelf titles than anybody out there had not even a section devoted to high end audio. Fortunately I tracked this book down with Amazon. Mostly written in a definitional format with well emphasized headers,it explains the sound process in an understandable manner without overly technical descriptions which can befuddle and intimidate novices. Excellent diagrams and photos of various components are an additional welcome.Home theater and two channel audio are carefully distinguished and the Brands and Choices section,which is always a subject of controversy given it's subjective nature, was discussed in an unbiased manner. All this without the snobbery often accompanied by discussions regarding high end audio.My only gripe would be the segments on plugging in and set up. The author seems to imply the process of interconnecting cables between components is difficult.Perhaps in home theater,(which I don't partake in) but for two channel audio, it's not a difficult process and the manuals I have seen are quite good with their illustrated instructions. Connecting is but a a manner of minutes.The book is a solid audio primer. However as one possibly becomes more serious minded he or she might wish to look into Harley's Guide to High End Audio, a huge manual which get's into philosophic matters regarding the creation of sound with more emphasis on technical details.But for those getting their feet wet or wanting to build the confidence needed to walk into a high end shop and hold their own (and let's face it, this experience can rank second only to walking into a car dealership), then you can be assured this book will provide you with the necessary vocabulary. Reassuring to know that amidst the negative prognosis of some with regards to the future of two channel audio,(let's keep in mind that the turntable is making a bit of a comeback too),people like Adams and Harley are committed to seeing that those with the interest and belief get the necessary knowledge to put together a home system leading to many hours of rewarding listening surpassing previous listening experiences. Not a bad thing at that. And without in many instances, completely breaking the till.And as I'm still doing research to purchase new speakers(probably will buy within a couple of months of this review going on-line) and speakers probably the toughest purchase with over 400 brands out there and possibly committing to an arduous testing process,you can bet I will consult this book on quite a few occasions before committing my cash.