Henry Adams

“This book…is a complete success. Nowhere does it seem compressed or unintelligible…or skimpy. Rather it seems both economical—not a word wasted—and ample—all relevant topics are thoroughly explored… In all, Henry Adams is a remarkable feat of the biographer’s art… I am glad that this brilliant, crotchety man has got a biography, and gladder still that it was written by Ernest Samuels.”—Hugh Brogan, The New York Times Book Review

“This welcome distillation reaffirms the enduring reputation of the original work and should earn for Samuels a new generation of admirers… And the book is a pleasure to read. ‘Take your own life,’ Adams once advised, ‘in order to prevent biographers from taking it in theirs.’ But even at his most crotchety…Henry Adams himself might not have been able to resist this enthralling book.”—Harold Holzer, The Chicago Tribune

“Written with suavity and utter assurance.”—Mark Feeney, The Boston Sunday Globe

“[This] is a very readable history of the intellectual development and influence of America’s most creative—and, in later years, morosely crotchety—minds… Samuels’ contribution to our understanding of Henry Adams…is distinctive and profound.”—Ronald Grant Nutter, Borderlines

“The revision and abridgment of the three volumes have been performed with uncanny skill. What results is one of the most powerful literary–intellectual biographies ever done of an American.”—R. W. B. Lewis