Mr. Book just finished John Quincy Adams: A Man For The Whole People, by Randall Woods.

This book was published in June 2024.

This was an extremely thorough and very well researched biography of John Quincy Adams. It covered everything from his childhood through his career as a diplomat, his time as Secretary of State, his presidency and then his time in the House of Representatives.

In addition to Adams’s life, the book also covered so many other events happening in the country and the world at the time. Normally, a book this thorough and in depth would be a great candidate for an A+. But, this was one of the rare ones when less thorough, less researched would have been better. There were too many times when I felt overwhelmed by all of the details involving people that were only tangentially, if at all, connected to Adams.

For those reasons, I can only give this book an A.

Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on November 21, 2024.