Category: 100 Books in 2009

John Quincy Adams – A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

One of my goals is to read a biography of each of our presidents. I just finished reading John Quincy Adams – A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel. JQA was president number six.

I also have a goal to read 100 books in 2009. I may not make it but the list so far in 2009 is here.

According to Nagel, John Quincy Adams' presidency "was a hapless failure and best forgotten." Which made me think about how a man's life should not be judged by his time in office. Adams' life as a diplomat and secretary of state before his Presidency and as a congressman and anti slavery fighter after the presidency was very successful and included many substantial accomplishments and contributions.

Did you know that he can take much of the credit for the establishment of the Smithsonian Institute? In 1835 James Smithson, an Englishman, "left his entire estate, amounting to somewhat more than $500,000 in gold, to enable the United States of America to increase knowledge among its citizens." Adams worked for over ten years to keep the Smithson bequest form being "wasted upon hungry and worthless jackals." The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846.

Adams kept a journal of daily entries about his life for fifty years. Nagel says "Adams' Diary is rightly acclaimed the most discerning and useful personal journal kept by an American …… By joining so many descriptions of his inward state with innumerable astute reports on his larger life, Adams created a diary that deserves to rank near if not next to that of Samuel Pepys."

A Puiblic Life a Private Life is primarily the story of Adams life based on this diary. That is what makes the book so fascinating and different from other Presidential biographies I have read. You see Adams the man with all his warts and all his strengths. You see why he was so loved by his family and you can see how much he reviled those he perceived as enemies.

I very much enjoyed this book. Adams watched the smoke of the Battle of Bunker Hill with his mother, Abigail, from a hill near his house when he was 9. He lived to be 80 and died in the Capitol after trying to rise to give a speech against the Mexican American war. He traveled extensively both as a diplomat and privately. His view of the world during his 80 years grabbed my imagination.

In his introduction Nagel explains how his objective in this book is to illuminate the previously unexplored private side of JQA as well as his public side. Nagel says "Indeed, after completing this book I find myself not only admiring Adams for his many achievements but actually liking the man – despite his frequently exasperating behavior, now to be understood with sympathy." I couldn't have said it better myself!

Teenager traveling 1968 or 1781

When I was 16 I boarded at my school in Brisbane, Australia while my Dad was on temporary assignment in New York City. I still remember how much I loved being independent and how much I looked forward to traveling alone (with my younger sisters) from Brisbane to New York to see my parents at Christmas time. I was extremely upset when Mom and Dad arranged for some friends of theirs to travel with us part of the way.  As a 16 year old I considered myself no longer in need of adult supervision.

I have just started reading Paul C Nagel's biography of our sixth president John Quincy Adams. JQA's independent traveling as a teenager amazed me. Especially when you think that trips took weeks and could be very dangerous.

In 1781 JQA was in Holland with his father who was on a diplomatic mission. It was decided that JQA should go as a secretary to Francis Dana on a mission to St Petersburg, Russia. Adams and Dana left on July 7, 1781 for the 2,000 mile trip. They stopped in Berlin, Germany and Riga, Poland and arrived in St Petersburg on August 27.

Soon it was decided that John Quincy should return to Holland alone so he could continue his studies. He left St Petersburg for Stockholm on October 30, 1782. He was 15. He spent a couple of days in Helsinki and dined with the commander of Swedish forces in Finland. He then arrived in Stockholm on November 22. Adams loved Sweden and the Swedish people. Nagel says "It must have been a reassuring experience for a boy of fifteen to talk on equal terms with leading citizens of Stockholm." He was especially taken with the Swedish women. "For him, Sweden would always be "the land of lovely dames." He admitted that he had never forgotten the "palpitations of heart" these women caused him— "and of which they never knew."

From Stockholm he went on to Goteborg then Copenhagen then Hamberg and finally back to Holland on April 21. "Meanwhile, a frantic John Adams was asking everyone who had been in Northern Europe if they had seen his wondering son, for Johnny made little effort to keep his father apprised of his whereabouts."

Adams always had very happy memories of this independent trip. "It was a time of few worries and much freedom" I can understand why it was such a happy time for him.

One True Theory of Love by Laura Fitzgerald

My friend Todd of Tucson Tamale Company has a friend who has a new book that just came out. The book (One True Theory of Love by Laura Fitzgerald) is set in Tucson and the Tucson Tamale Company is mentioned in the book. Todd offered a dozen free tamales to the first person to identify on what page the shop is mentioned.

I preordered One True Theory of Love on Amazon. It arrived last week. I finished reading it Wednesday and I won the tamales!! Todd announced it on his blog here.

I used to read a lot of romance novels and the thing I dislike about many of them is that the main character seems so dumb! One True Theory of Love is different. The main character, Meg is a single mom with a nine year old son. She is a kindergarten teacher, independent and smart. 

Meg's first husband abandoned her when she was pregnant with Henry, her son. She is happy with her life and is not looking for a man when she meets Ahmed who is the Tucson assistant city manager and the story unfolds from there. One of the key threads of the book is truth telling and how important it is to a relationship.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope it does well. It is thought provoking, entertaining and fun.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

I went to the Reno Newcomers Club Book Club yesterday. It was my first time attending this book club and I was very impressed. We had a good thought provoking discussion. Of course probably part of the reason the discussion was so good was that the book is so good.

We discussed Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Her characters and her descriptions are stunning. I'm still amazed by how much I cared about the characters. The book consists of two parts. The first called Storm in June tells the story of several people trying to escape Paris as the Germans get close. I even cared about the obnoxious characters. And her descriptions of the chaos and especially of the country side have stuck with me. Her writing is a work of art. It reminds me of a Renoir painting.

One of the points that was made in the book club discussion is that most books about war are written with perspective after the war. Part of what makes Suite Francaise different is that it is written from the middle of the war. She didn't know how things would turn out. People are just normal even in the face of very extraordinary circumstances.

The second part of the book is called Dolce. It is about a small town and a few of the families with whom the Germans are billeted. You might think that Nemirovsky would write about the Germans with hate but she writes about them as very real people. Her characters deal with the tension between the Germans as invaders and as attractive young men.

This is the first fiction book I have read in a long time and as usual with fiction I empathized with the characters and found my mood impacted as a result. I was also haunted by knowing that this is an unfinished book since Nemirovsky was arrested by the Germans and was killed at Auschwitz.

The Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer

I received Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer for Christmas. After reading and enjoying A Perfect Union I thought I would take a break from reading history. Not because I am bored with history… the more history I read the more I want to read – but I am interested in lots of things including science and Soul Made Flesh is about the brain. But it turns out Soul Made Flesh is about history – the history of science and  medicine. This shouldn't have been a surprise to me since the subtitle of the book is The Discovery of the Brain — and How it Changed the World. I devoured this book and I learned a whole bunch of stuff I knew nothing about.

I learned about Aristotle, Plato and Galen and their theories of the soul and the body, I especially enjoyed learning about the English Civil war and the late 1600's when people were leaving England to settle in North America. The scientific discoveries during this period were extensive. It is fascinating to see how the civil war opened up the possibility of doing experiments to prove theories.

The central story of Soul Made Flesh is the story of Thomas Willis and his contemporaries in the Oxford Circle, Boyle, Wren and Petty. As England got rid of King Charles and as Oliver Cromwell took power Willis and friends developed the technology to study the brain –  preservatives, microscopes and injections. I always think of Sir Christopher Wren as the architect of St Paul's cathedral but he performed the first successful injection. I knew about Boyle's law (P1*V1*T1=P2*V2*T2) from physics class but I had no idea that his experiments led to an understanding of the function of the lungs.

In 1660 when Charles II was restored to the throne Willis who was a royalist was able to complete his study of the brain and publish his book "The Anatomy of the Brain and the Nerves". It went through 23 editions and "well into the nineteenth century it would be required reading for anyone who would call himself an expert on the brain." Amazingly the illustrations were all done by Christopher Wren.

 Surprisingly (to me) Soul Made Flesh also gave insight into the seeds that were being planted for the American revolution. Cromwell's New Model Army was " a new experiment in democracy". Thomas Locke was a student of Willis. He is also the reason so few people today know about Willis.  Although Willis completely revolutionized and corrected man's understanding of the brain he still used completely ineffectual treatments on his patients. He based his description of the brain on observations but it was Locke and his friend Sydenham who based their practice of medicine on what they could prove through experiment worked. "Anatomy, Locke and Sydenham declared, "will be no more able to direct a physician how to cure a disease than how to make a man". It is really only recently that we have come back to a belief that understanding the anatomy of the brain can help us understand how to cure it's diseases. "Thanks to Locke philosophers stopped looking to the physical world to understand morality"

Thomas Locke went on to publish and become famous for his book "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"  which made the argument that people were entitled to overthrow a leader who violated their natural rights. His writings and especially this principal greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and our other founding fathers. 

I really enjoyed this book. Carl Zimmer is a great author. He makes complicated and diverse subjects fascinating.