Henry Adams was a very curious man â curious both in the sense that he wanted to learn all he could about how America operated and curious because he disliked his own time and, in some ways, his own life.
Adams (1838-1918) is the subject of an engaging new biography by David Brown, who teaches history at Elizabethtown College. He previously has explored the lives of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and the historian Richard Hofstadter.
âThe Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adamsâ (Scribner) is about a historian who thought he would rather have been a politician. He was not a politician, like his forebears, because he wanted offices thrust upon him and no one did the thrusting.