Henry Adams and the Making of America Author:Garry Wills Wills showcases Henry Adams"s little-known but seminal study — of the early United States and draws from it fresh insights on — the paradoxes that roil America to this day. Adams drew on his own — southern fixations, his extensive foreign travel, his political service in — Lincoln"s White House, and much more to invent the study of history — as we kn... more »ow it. His nine-volume chronicle of America from 1800 to
1816 established new standards for employing archival sources, firsthand
reportage, eyewitness accounts, and other techniques that have
become the essence of modern history.
Adams"s innovations went beyond the technical; he posited an
essentially ironic view of the legacy of Jefferson and Madison. As is
well known, they strove to shield the young country from "foreign
entanglements," a standing army, a central bank, and a federal bureaucracy,
among other hallmarks of "big government." Yet by the end of
their tenures they had permanently entrenched all of these things in
American society. This is the "American paradox" that defines us
today: the idealized desire for isolation and political simplicity battling
against the inexorable growth and intermingling of political, economic,
and military forces. As Wills compellingly shows, the ironies spawned
two centuries ago still inhabit our foreign policy and the widening