Henry Adams

For other people named Henry Adams, seeHenry Adams (disambiguation).

Henry Brooks Adams(February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian and a member of theAdams political family,descended from two U.S. presidents. As a youngHarvardgraduate, he served as secretary to his father,Charles Francis Adams,Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to the United Kingdom. The posting influenced the younger man through the experience of wartime diplomacy, and absorption in English culture, especially the works ofJohn Stuart Mill.After theAmerican Civil War,he became a political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston.

Henry Adams
1885 photograph of Adams byWilliam Notman
Born	Henry Brooks Adams (1838-02-16)February 16, 1838 Boston, Massachusetts,U.S.
Died	March 27, 1918(1918-03-27)(aged 80) Washington, D.C.,U.S.
Resting place	Rock Creek Cemetery Washington, D.C., U.S.
Pen name	Frances Snow Compton
Occupation	Journalist historian academic novelist
Language	English
Nationality	American
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	Harvard College University of Berlin
Genre	memoir,history
Notable works	The Education of Henry Adams,The History of the United States of America 1801–1817
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize
Spouse	Marian Hooper Adams
Relatives	Charles Francis Adams Sr.(father) Abigail Brown Brooks (mother)

During his lifetime, he was best known forThe History of the United States of America 1801–1817,a nine-volume work, praised for its literary style, command of the documentary evidence, and deep (family) knowledge of the period and its major figures. His posthumously published memoir,The Education of Henry Adams,won thePulitzer Prizeand went on to be named by theModern Libraryas the best English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century.

Early life

He was born in Boston on February 16, 1838, into one of the country's most prominent families. His parents wereCharles Francis Adams Sr.(1807–1886) and Abigail Brooks (1808–1889).Both his paternal grandfather,John Quincy Adams,and great-grandfather,John Adams,one of the most prominent among theFounding Fathers,had been U.S. Presidents. His maternal grandfather,Peter Chardon Brooks,was one of Massachusetts' most successful and wealthiest merchants. Another great-grandfather,Nathaniel Gorham,signed theConstitution.

Harvard graduation photo: 1858

After his graduation from Harvard University in 1858,he embarked on agrand tourof Europe, during which he also attended lectures incivil lawat theUniversity of Berlin.

In his 50s, he was initiated into thePhi Kappa Psifraternity as an honorary member at the1893 Columbian ExpositionbyHarris J. Ryan,a judge for the exhibit on electrical engineering. Through that organization, he was a member of theIrving Literary Society.

During the Civil War

Adams returned home from Europe in the midst of the heated presidential election of 1860. He tried his hand again at law, taking employment with JudgeHorace Gray'sBoston firm,but this was short-lived.

His father, Charles Francis Adams Sr., was also seeking re-election to the US House of Representatives.After his successful re-election, Charles Francis asked Henry to be his private secretary, continuing a father-son pattern set by John and John Quincy and suggesting that Charles Francis had chosen Henry as the political scion of that generation of the family. Henry shouldered the responsibility reluctantly and with much self-doubt. "[I] had little to do", he reflected later, "and knew not how to do it rightly."

During this time, Adams was the anonymous Washington correspondent forCharles Hale'sBoston Daily Advertiser.

London (1861–1868)

On March 19, 1861,Abraham Lincolnappointed Charles Francis Adams Sr.United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom.Henry accompanied his father to London as his private secretary. He also became the anonymous London correspondent forThe New York Times.The two Adamses were kept very busy, monitoring Confederate diplomatic intrigues and trying to obstruct the construction of Confederatecommerce raidersandblockade runners by British shipyards(seeAlabama Claims). Henry's writings for theTimesargued that Americans should be patient with the British. While in Britain, Adams was befriended by many noted men, includingCharles Lyell,Francis T. Palgrave,Richard Monckton Milnes,James Milnes Gaskell,andCharles Milnes Gaskell.He worked to introduce the youngHenry Jamesto English society, with the help of his closest and lifelong friend Charles Milnes Gaskell and his wife Lady Catherine (neeWallop).

While in Britain, Henry read and was taken with the works ofJohn Stuart Mill.For Adams, Mill's 1861 bookConsiderations on Representative Governmentshowed the necessity of an enlightened, moral, and intelligent elite to provide leadership to a government elected by the masses and subject to demagoguery, ignorance, and corruption. Henry wrote to his brother Charles that Mill demonstrated to him that "democracy is still capable of rewarding a conscientious servant."His years in London led Adams to conclude that he could best provide that knowledgeable and conscientious leadership by working as a correspondent and journalist.

Return to America

Henry Adams seated at his desk in his rented house at 1607 H Street in Washington, D.C., writing, 1883

In 1868, Adams returned to the United States and settled in Washington, DC, where he began working as ajournalist.Adams saw himself as a traditionalist longing for the democratic ideal of the 17th and 18th centuries. Accordingly, he was keen on exposingpolitical corruptionin his journalism.

Harvard professor

In 1870, Adams was appointedprofessorof medieval history at Harvard, a position he held until his early retirement in 1877 at 39.As an academichistorian,Adams is considered to have been the first (in 1874–1876) to conduct historicalseminarwork in the United States. Among his students wasHenry Cabot Lodge,who worked closely with Adams as a graduate student.

Adams was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciencesin 1875.

Author

Adams'sThe History of the United States of America (1801 to 1817)(9 vols., 1889–1891) is a highly detailed history of the Jefferson and Madison administrations with a focus on diplomacy.Wide praise was given for its literary merit, especially the opening five chapters of volume 1, describing the nation in 1800. These chapters have also been criticized; Noble Cunningham states flatly, "Adams misjudged the state of the nation in 1800." In striving for literary effect, Cunningham argues, Adams ignored the dynamism and sophistication of the new nation.Such arguments aside, historians have long recognized it as a major and permanent monument of American historiography. It has been called "a neglected masterpiece" byGarry Wills,and "a history yet to be replaced" by the great historianC. Vann Woodward.

In the 1880s, Adams wrote two novels, starting withDemocracy,which was published anonymously in 1880 and immediately became popular in literary circles in England and Europe as well as in America. (Only after Adams's death did his publisher reveal his authorship.)Democracyexposes the corruption of political life in Washington, D.C., building on Adams' unique insider's perspective. His other novel, published under thenom de plumeof Frances Snow Compton, wasEsther,whose heroine was believed to be modeled after his wife.

During the late 1860s and early 1870s, Adams edited, with the assistance of his brother Charles Francis Adams, the major American intellectual-literary journal, theNorth American Review.During his tenure it published a number of articles exposing corrupt malpractices in finance, corporations and government, anticipating the work of the "muckrakers" by a generation. The brothers collected several of their most important essays inChapters of Erie(1871). This experience marked the public commencement of Henry Adams' critical observation of, and radical disenchantment with, the operations and ascendancy of corporations and centralized finance in the economic, social and political life of America. Summarizing the observations of a lifetime, he wrote to his brother Brooks on September 20, 1910 (vol. 6, pp. 369–370,Letters,ed. Levenson et al.): "Our system of protection [of industry and commerce]... is fatal to our principles.... Railways, trusts, banking-system, manufactures, capital and labor, all rest on the principle of monopoly... The suggestion that these great corporate organisms, which now perform all the vital functions of our social life, should behave themselves decently, gives away our contention that they have no right to exist. Nor am I prepared to admit that more decency can be attained through a legislature made up of similar people exercising similar illegal powers.... From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud.... The conviction of having reached this point where we have no choice but to go on in our own rot, drove me out of all share in public affairs twenty years ago.. Every one who has assumed such a share since then has only muddled and made the matter worse."

In 1884, Adams was elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society.In 1892, he received the degreeLL.D.,fromWestern Reserve University.In 1894, Adams was elected president of theAmerican Historical Association.His address, entitled "The Tendency of History", was deliveredin absentia.The essay predicted the development of a scientific approach to history, but was somewhat ambiguous as to what this achievement might mean.

During the 1890s, Adams exercised a profound and fruitful influence over the thought and writings of his younger brother Brooks. Brooks' essay, "The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma", an offshoot of their decades long conversations and correspondence, was published years later.

Adams was an accomplished poet and in later life a friend of young poets—notablyGeorge Cabot LodgeandTrumbull Stickney—but published nothing in his lifetime. His important poems "Buddha and Brahma" and "Prayers to the Virgin and the Dynamo" are included (respectively) in the Library of America's Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Anthologies, and a half dozen sonnets, a Troubadour translation, and one lyric are scattered through the letters. It is an open question whether the Massachusetts Historical Society or other archives preserve more.

Henry Adams seated with dog on steps of piazza, c. 1883

In 1904, Adams privately published a copy of his "Mont Saint Michel and Chartres",a pastiche of history, travel, and poetry that celebrated the unity of medieval society, especially as represented in the great cathedrals of France. Originally meant as a diversion for his nieces and" nieces-in-wish ", it was publicly released in 1913 at the request ofRalph Adams Cram,an important American architect, and published with support of theAmerican Institute of Architects.

He publishedThe Education of Henry Adamsin 1907, in a small private edition for selected friends. Only following Adams's death wasThe Educationmade available to the general public, in an edition issued by theMassachusetts Historical Society.It ranked first on theModern Library's 1998list of 100 Best Nonfiction Booksand was named the best book of the 20th century by theIntercollegiate Studies Institute,aconservativeorganization that promotesclassical education.It was awarded thePulitzer Prizein 1919.

Some center-right intellectuals view the book critically. Conservative journalistFred Siegelconsidered the worldview expressed therein to be rooted in resentment of America's middle class. "Henry Adams," wrote Siegel, "grounded the intellectual's alienation from American life in the resentment that superior men feel when they are insufficiently appreciated in America's common-man culture."Others view Adams's critique of the commercialism, corruption and pecuniolatry of American mercantile culture as central.

Personal life

Relations

Siblings

Louisa Catherine Adams Kuhn (1831-1870). Her brother describes her death from tetanus following a carriage accident inBagni di Lucca,Italyin his Chaos Chapter ofThe Education of Henry Adams.She is buried in Florence's 'English' Cemetery.

John Quincy Adams II(1833–1894) was a graduate of Harvard (1853), practiced law, and was a Democratic member for several terms of the Massachusetts general court. In 1872, he was nominated for vice president by the Democratic faction that refused to support the nomination ofHorace Greeley.

Charles Francis Adams Jr.(1835–1915) fought with the Union in the Civil War, receiving in 1865 thebrevetof brigadier general in the regular army. He became an authority on railway management as the author ofRailroads, Their Origin and Problems(1878), and as president of theUnion Pacific Railroadfrom 1884 to 1890. He collaborated with Henry on the editing of The North Atlantic Review and other projects.

Brooks Adams(1848–1927) practiced law and became a writer. His books includeThe Gold Standard(1894),The Law of Civilization and Decay(1895),America's Economic Supremacy(1900),The New Empire(1902),The Theory of Social Revolutions(1914), andThe Emancipation of Massachusetts(1919). Henry's influence on and involvement with his youngest brother's thought and writing was profound and enduring.

Social life and friendships

Adams was a member of an exclusive circle, a group of friends called the "Five of Hearts" that consisted of Henry, his wife Clover, geologist and mountaineerClarence King,John Hay(assistant to Lincoln and later Secretary of State), and Hay's wife Clara.

One of Adams's frequent travel companions was the artistJohn La Farge,with whom he journeyed to Japan and the South Seas.

From 1885 until 1888,Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight(1846–1917), theState Department's chief librarian, lived with Adams at his home at 1603 H Street inWashington, D.C.,where he served as Adams's literary assistant, personal secretary, and household manager. Dwight would go on to serve as archivist of the Adams family archives in Quincy, Massachusetts; director of theBoston Public Library;and U.S. Consul atVevey,Switzerland.

Marriage to Marian "Clover" Hooper

On June 27, 1872, Adams marriedClover Hooperin Beverly, Massachusetts. They spent their honeymoon in Europe, much of it withCharles Milnes GaskellatWenlock Abbey,Shropshire.While there, exemplifying the New England civic conscience she and Henry shared, Clover wrote "England is charming for a few families but hopeless for most... Thank the Lord that the American eagle flaps and screams over us." Upon their return, Adams went back to his position at Harvard, and their home at 91 Marlborough Street, Boston, became a gathering place for a lively circle ofintellectuals.In 1877, his wife and he moved to Washington, DC, where their home onLafayette Square,across from theWhite House,again became a dazzling and witty center of social life. He worked as a journalist and continued working as a historian.

Adams Memorial modeled 1886–1891, cast 1969Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Her suicide

On Sunday morning, December 6, 1885, after a late breakfast at their home, 1607 H Street on Lafayette Square, Clover Hooper Adams went to her room. Henry, troubled by a toothache, had planned to see his dentist. While departing his home, he was met by a woman calling to see his wife. Adams went upstairs to her room to ask if she would receive the visitor and found his wife lying on a rug before the fire; an opened vial of potassium cyanide, which Clover had frequently used in processing photographs, lay nearby. Adams carried his wife to a sofa, then ran for a doctor. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Charles E. Hagner pronounced Clover dead.

Much speculation and numerous theories have been given concerning the causes of Clover Adams's suicide. Her death has been attributed to depression over her father's death,as well as a family history of mental depression and suicide.Posthumous speculation has been made more difficult by Henry Adams's destruction of most of Clover's letters and photos following her death.His autobiography maintains a profound silence about his wife after her suicide. Adams's grief was profound and enduring. The event was life-shattering for Adams and profoundly altered the course of his life.

Henry, his brother, Charles Francis Adams, Clover's brother Edward, and her sister Ellen, with her husband Ephraim Gurney, were the attendees at a brief funeral service held on December 9, 1885, at the house on Lafayette Square. Interment services followed at Rock Creek Cemetery, but the actual burial was postponed until December 11, 1885, because of the inclement weather.A few weeks later, Adams ordered a modest headstone as a temporary marker.Later he commissioned a monument for her tomb from his friend, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who created a masterpiece for her memorial.

Relationship with Elizabeth Sherman Cameron

Portrait of Elizabeth Sherman Cameron(1900) byAnders Zorn

Henry Adams first met Elizabeth Cameron in January 1881 at a reception in the drawing room of the house of John and Clara Hay.Elizabeth was considered to be one of the most beautiful and intelligent women in the Washington area. Elizabeth had grown up as Lizzie Sherman, the daughter of Judge Charles Sherman of Ohio, the niece of Secretary of the TreasuryJohn Shermanin Hayes's cabinet, and the niece of GeneralWilliam Tecumseh Sherman.Her family had pressured Lizzie into a loveless marriage with SenatorJ. Donald Cameron,brokering a prenuptial agreement that provided her with the income from $160,000 worth of securities, a very large amount in 1878, equivalent to about $5 million in 2023.The arranged marriage on May 9, 1878, united the reluctant 20-year-old beauty with a 44-year-old widower with six children. Eliza, his eldest, who had served as her father's hostess, was now displaced by a stepmother the same age. The children never accepted her. The marriage was further strained by the Senator's coarseness and indifference and his fondness for bourbon and the world of political corruption he inhabited, which is reflected in Adams's novelDemocracy.

Henry Adams initiated a correspondence with Lizzie on May 19, 1883, when she and her husband departed for Europe. That letter reflected his unhappiness with her departure and his longing for her return.It was the first of hundreds to follow for the next 35 years, recording a passionate yet unconsummated relationship. On December 7, 1884, one year before Clover's suicide, Henry Adams wrote to Lizzie, "I shall dedicate my next poem to you. I shall have you carved over the arch of my stone doorway. I shall publish your volume of extracts with your portrait on the title page. None of these methods can fully express the extent to which I am yours."

Adams's wife, Clover, who had written a weekly letter to her father throughout her marriage except for the brief hiatus during her breakdown along the Nile, never mentioned concerns or suspicions about Henry's relationship with Lizzie. Nothing in the letters of her family or circle of friends indicates her distrust or unhappiness with her husband in this matter. Indeed, after her death, Henry found a letter written by Clover to her sister Ellen which had not been mailed. The survival of this letter was assured by its contents which read, "If I had one single point of character or goodness, I would stand on that and grow back to life. Henry is more patient and loving than words can express—God might envy him—he bears and hopes and despairs hour after hour—Henry is beyond all words tenderer and better than all of you even."

On Christmas Day 1885, Adams sent one of Clover's favorite pieces of jewelry to Cameron, requesting that she "sometimes wear it, to remind you of her."

Later life

In late 1885, Adams moved into his newly-completed mansion next door at 1603 H Street, which was designed byHenry Hobson Richardson,an old friend of Adams and one of the most prominent architects of his day.(The house was razed in 1927 and theHay-Adams Hotelwas built on the site.)

Following his wife's death, Adams took up a restless life as a globetrotter, traveling extensively, spending summers in Paris and winters in Washington, D.C., where he commissioned theAdams Memorialdesigned by sculptorAugustus Saint-Gaudensand architectStanford Whitefor her grave site inRock Creek CemeteryinWashington, D.C.

Death and burial

In 1912, Adams suffered a stroke, perhaps brought on by news of the sinking of theTitanic,for which he had purchased tickets to return to the U.S. from Europe. After the stroke, his scholarly output diminished, but he continued to travel, write letters, and host dignitaries and friends at hisWashington, D.C.,home.

In the first volume of her autobiography,Eleanor Rooseveltoffers this vignette of Adams in old age:

"Occasionally we received one of the much-coveted invitations to lunch or dine at his house... My first picture of this supposedly stern, rather biting Mr. Adams is of an old gentleman in a victoria outside of our house on N Street. [His secretary] Aileen Tone and I were having tea inside, but Mr. Adams never paid calls. He did, however, request that the children of the house come out and join him in the victoria;... and they brought their Scottie dog and sat and chatted and played all over the vehicle. No one was ever able thereafter to persuade me that Mr. Adams was quite the cynic he was supposed to be. One day after lunch with him, my husband [the future President] mentioned something which at the time was causing him deep concern in the Government, and Mr. Adams looked at him rather fiercely and said: 'Young man, I have lived in this house many years and seen the occupants of that White House across the square come and go, and nothing that you minor officials or the occupant of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long!'... Henry Adams loved to shock his hearers, and I think he knew that those who were worth their salt would understand him and pick out of the knowledge which flowed from his lips the things which might be useful, and discard the cynicism as an old man's defense against his own urge to be [still] an active factor in the work of the world."

On March 27, 1918, Adams died in Washington, D.C., at age 80. He was interred beside his wife inRock Creek Cemetery,Washington, D.C.

Views

Anglo-Saxonism

Considered a prominentAnglo-Saxonistof particularly the nineteenth-century, Adams has been portrayed by modern historians as anxious about the immigration of the era into the United States, particularly from Eastern Europe.More starkly put, Adams also wrote of his belief that "the dark races are gaining on us".He considered the U.S. Constitution itself as belonging to the Anglo-Saxon "race", and as an expression of "Germanic freedom".He went so far as to criticize fellow scholars for not being absolute enough in their Anglo-Saxonism, such asWilliam Stubbs,whom he criticized for downplaying the significance, as he saw it, of "Germanic law" orhundred lawin its contribution to Englishcommon law.

Adams was nevertheless highly critical of the English. He referred to them as a "besotted race" from whom nothing good could come and "wanted nothing so much as to wipe England off the earth."

Antisemitism

Adams's attitude towardsJewshas been described as one of loathing.John Haysaid that when Adams "sawVesuviusreddening... [he] searched for a Jew stoking the fire. "

Adams wrote: "I detest [the Jews], and everything connected with them, and I live only and solely with the hope of seeing their demise, with all their accursed Judaism. I want to see all the lenders at interest taken out and executed."To one friend, he wrote: "Bombard New York. I know no place that would be more improved by it. The chief population is Jew, and the rest is German Jew."

His letters were "peppered with a variety of antisemitic remarks", according to historian Robert Michael, as in the following citations from historian Edward Saveth:

"We are in the hands of the Jews", Adams lamented. "They can do what they please with our values." He advised against investment except in the form of gold locked in a safe deposit box. "There you have no risk but the burglar. In any other form you have the burglar, the Jew, the Czar, the socialist, and, above all, the total irremediable, radical rottenness of our whole social, industrial, financial and political system."

Edward Chalfant's definitive three-volume biography of Adams includes an exhaustive, well-documented examination of Adams's "antisemitism" in its second volume,Improvement of the World.He shows that most of the time when Adams says "Jews" he means "financiers." This accords with the historical English usage referenced by the second definition under theOxford English Dictionaryentry, a usage that was common in Adams's time and social milieu. It also accords with Adams's frequent laments that "the eighteenth-century fabric of a priori, or moral, principles" had been replaced with "a bankers' world" and that the "banking mind was obnoxious".

Adams esteemed individual Jewish personages. In the "Dilettantism" chapter ofThe Education of Henry Adamshe wrote of historianFrancis Palgravethat "the reason of his superiority lay in his name, which was Cohen, and his mind which was Cohen also". (Palgrave, the son of a Jewish stockbroker, had changed his name from Cohen upon marriage.) In the "Political Morality" chapter of the same volume he praises the Jewish statesmanBenjamin Disraeliover the GentilesPalmerston,Russell and Gladstone, writing: "Complex these gentlemen were not. Disraeli alone might, by contrast, be called complex."

Historical entropy

Main article:Entropy and life

In 1910, Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volumeA Letter to American Teachers of Historyproposing a "theory of history" based on thesecond law of thermodynamicsand the principle ofentropy.This, essentially, states that all energy dissipates, order becomes disorder, and the earth will eventually become uninhabitable. In short, he applied the physics of dynamical systems ofRudolf Clausius,Hermann von Helmholtz,andWilliam Thomsonto the modeling of human history.

In his 1909 manuscriptThe Rule of Phase Applied to History,Adams attempted to useMaxwell's demonas a historicalmetaphor,though he seems to have misunderstood and misapplied the principle.Adams interpreted history as a process moving towards "equilibrium", but he sawmilitaristicnations (he felt Germany pre-eminent in this class) as tending to reverse this process, a "Maxwell's Demon of history".

Adams made many attempts to respond to the criticism of his formulation from his scientific colleagues, but the work remained incomplete at Adams's death in 1918. It was published posthumously.

Robert E. Lee

Adams said, "I think thatLeeshould have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world. "

The Virgin Mary

InMont Saint-Michel and Chartres,Adams argues that the previous nineteen hundred years of civilization dating from the birth of Christ had been dominated by the feminine, fertile image of the Blessed Virgin, and that the industrial "dynamo" was a masculine, destructive force which would upend history.

Writings by Adams

• 1876.Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law(withHenry Cabot Lodge,Ernest Young andJ.L. Laughlin)
• 1879.Life of Albert Gallatin
• 1879.The Writings of Albert Gallatin(as editor, three volumes)
• 1880.Democracy: An American Novel
• 1882.John Randolph
• 1884.Esther: A Novel(facsimile ed., 1938, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints,ISBN978-0-8201-1187-2)
• 1889–1891.History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison(nine volumes)
• 1891.Historical Essays
• 1893.Tahiti: Memoirs of Arii Taimai e Marama of Eimee... Last Queen of Tahiti(facsimile of the 1901 Paris ed., 1947 Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints,ISBN978-0-8201-1213-8)
• 1904.Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
• 1911.The Life of George Cabot Lodge(facsimile ed. 1978, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints,ISBN978-0-8201-1316-6)
• 1918.The Education of Henry Adams
• 1919.The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma
• 1930–1938.Letters(Edited by W.C. Ford, two volumes)
• 1982.The Letters of Henry Adams, Volumes 1–3: 1858–1892(Edited by J.C. Levenson, Ernest Samuels and Charles Vandersee)
• 1988.The Letters of Henry Adams, Volumes 4–6: 1892–1918(Edited by J.C. Levenson, Ernest Samuels and Charles Vandersee)

Reprinted

• Democracy: An American Novel, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams(Ernest Samuels, ed.) (Library of America,1983)ISBN978-0-940450-12-7
• History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison(Earl N. Harbert, ed.) (Library of America,1986) Vol I (Jefferson)ISBN978-0-940450-34-9.Vol II (Madison)ISBN978-0-940450-35-6

See also

• Maxwell's demon
• The Education of Henry Adams

References

Sources

• Adams, James Truslow(1933).Henry Adams.New York: Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.
• Adams, Marian Hooper (1936).The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, 1865–1883.Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. (Edited by W. Thoron).
• Baym, Max Isaac (1951).The French Education of Henry Adams.Columbia University Press.
• Blackmur, R.P. (1980)Henry Adams: A Leading Critic's Account of a Great American Figure.HarcourtISBN978-0151399970
• Boyd, Kelly, ed.Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writers(Rutledge, 1999) 1:2–4
• Brookhiser, Richard(2002).America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918.New York: Free Press.
• Brown, David S. (2020).The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams.Scribner.
• Cater, H.D., ed., (1947).Henry Adams and His Friends: A Collection of His Unpublished Letters.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Chalfant, Edward (1982).Both Sides of the Ocean: A biography of Henry Adams, His First Life, 1838–1862.Hamden, Connecticut: Archon BooksISBN978-0-208-01901-1
• Chalfant, Edward (1994).Better in Darkness: A Biography of Henry Adams, His Second Life, 1862–1891.Hamden, Connecticut: Archon BooksISBN978-0-208-02041-3
• Chalfant, Edward (2001).Improvement of the World: A Biography of Henry Adams, His Third Life, 1891–1918.Hamden, Connecticut: Archon BooksISBN978-0-208-02232-5.
• Decker, William Merrill (1990).The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams.University of North Carolina Press.
• Donovan, Timothy Paul (1961).Henry Adams and Brooks Adams: The Education of Two American Historians.University of Oklahoma Press.
• Dusinberre, William (1980).Henry Adams: The Myth of Failure.Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
• Egerton, Douglas R. (2019).Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America.New York: Basic Books.
• Georgini, Sara(2019).Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family.Oxford University Press.ISBN9780190882587
• Harbert, Earl N. (1977).The Force So Much Closer Home: Henry Adams and the Adams Family.New York University Press.
• Harbert, Earl N., ed. (1981).Critical Essays on Henry Adams.Boston: G.K. Hall. Contributors includeHenry Steele Commager,Ernest Samuels, Howard M. Munford, and Margaret J. Brown.
• Hochfield, George (1962).Henry Adams: An Introduction and Interpretation.New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
• Hume, Robert A. (1951).Runaway Star: An Appreciation of Henry Adams.Cornell University Press.
• Jacobson, Joanne (1992).Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams.University of Wisconsin Press.
• Jordy, William H.(1952).Henry Adams: Scientific Historian.New Haven: Yale University Press.OCLC 427157
• Kaplan, Harold (1981).Power and Order: Henry Adams and the Naturalist Tradition in American Fiction.University of Chicago Press.
• Le Clair, Robert Charles (1978).Three American Travellers in England: James Russell Lowell, Henry Adams, Henry James.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
• Levenson, J.C. (1957).The Mind and Art of Henry Adams.Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Levy, Richard S., ed.Antisemitism: A historical encyclopedia of prejudice and persecution(Vol. 1. Abc-clio, 2005) pp 2-3.
• Lyon, Melvin (1970).Symbol and Idea in Henry Adams.University of Nebraska Press.
• O'Toole, Patricia(1990).The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880–1918.New York: Clarkson. N. Potter.
• Rowe, John Carlos, ed., (1996).New Essays on the Education of Henry Adams.Cambridge University Press.
• Samuels, Ernest(1948).The Young Henry Adams.Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Samuels, Ernest (1958).Henry Adams: The Middle Years.Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Samuels, Ernest (1964).Henry Adams: The Major Phase.Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Samuels, Ernest (1989).Henry Adams.Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Abridgement of the three above volumes.)
• Sayre, Robert F. (1964).Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James.Princeton University Press.
• Scheyer, Ernst (1970).The Circle of Henry Adams: Art & Artists.Wayne State University Press.
• Simpson, Brooks D.(1996).The Political Education of Henry Adams.Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
• Stegmaier, Mark J. (2012).Henry Adams in the Secession Crisis.Louisiana State University Press.ISBN978-0-8071-4351-3
• Wagner, Vern (1969).The Suspension of Henry Adams: A Study of Manner and Matter.Wayne State University Press.
• Wasserstrom, William (1984).The Ironies of Progress: Henry Adams and the American Dream.Southern Illinois University Press.
• Wills, Garry(2005).Henry Adams and the Making of America.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.ISBN978-0-618-13430-4
• Young, James P. (2001).Henry Adams: The Historian as Political Theorist.University Press of Kansas.
• Zencey, Eric(1995).Panama.New York: Farrar, Straus & GirouxISBN978-0-425-15602-5

External links

• Works by Henry Adams in eBook formatStandard Ebooks
• Works by Henry AdamsatProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about Henry Adamsat theInternet Archive
• Works by Henry AdamsatLibriVox(public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Henry Adams,atHathi Trust
• Works by Henry AdamsArchived2014-08-03 at theWayback Machine,at The University of Virginia American Studies Hypertext Project
• The Letters of Henry Adams
• Henry Adams, Globe Trotter in Space and TimeArchived2014-06-21 at theWayback Machine
• Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911)."Adams, Henry".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Index entry for Henry Brooks Adams at Poets' Corner
• The Broken Arch,an unpublished work by Lorrie Tussman exploring the theme of unity in Western civilization based on the writings of Henry Adams
• "Writings of Henry Adams"fromC-SPAN'sAmerican Writers: A Journey Through History