Hello friends! Here we are again. I READ ANOTHER BOOK. Just kidding, I've read a bunch since we last talked. At least three I think? We went into Franzenland and talked about running and what else? Let me get up and review my list... Okay! Just those two! Well... here we are. I read my SECOND PRESIDENTIAL BIOGRAPHY!! Only (let me google this) 42 more to go!
So, this time around, I read JOHN ADAMS by DAVID MCCULLOUGH. It was awesome. First off, LOVE ME some David McCullough (I have to look down at the book every time I need to spell his name, this is going to get daunting.) Did you know he's from Pittsburgh??? Yeah, that's pretty cool. He's also a pretty exceptional writer. I read his book about the history of the Brooklyn Bridge a while back. It was fantastic. He made even the bends seem really fucking interesting. So of course when I was in the market for a John Adams book, I'd choose the one written by him.
Fun fact, because we all love fun facts: This book was SUPPOSED to be about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but DMC LOVED John Adams waaaaaay more and so he decided to change focus and write this book. After reading it, I can totally see why.
So, as of now, John Freakin Adams is my FAVORITE president of the presidential biographies I've read. (Recap: I'm reading all of them in order, so that's just G Dubs and JFA so far.) But JFA was such a better dude than G Dubs.
I don't even know how to begin talking about this book. Let's start off with a little story time:
JFA was a pretty bright kid, son of a farmer, went to Harvard, became a lawyer. You know typical shit for a founding father. He was very outspoken and argumentative, but that's only because he knew his shit. (As my dad would say, "Someone like you who THINKS you know everything makes it really hard for people like me who actually do.") One of my favorite things about him before he became like THE MAN was that after the Boston Massacre, he stepped up to defend the British soldiers. Like, basically, that was a huge deal. EVERYONE hated the Brits, but he knew they deserved a fair trial, whether or not they were scumbags. Like I said, good dude.
He was super against slavery. He grew up poor and was used to hard work and unlike OTHER founding fathers (ahem, GDUBS and THOMAS JEFFERSON) he didn't rely on slaves to build his empire. He never owned slaves and he was super outspoken against it. I find that to be really admirable, or at least compared to all the other shitheads of the time. One of my FAVORITE/MOST ABSURD things I read in this book was that when they were writing the Declaration of Independence, TJ wanted to add this part about the Brits being responsible for slavery in America and JFA was all, "Yo man, I think that's on us."
Oh yeah, and he was also the guy that nominated GDUBS as the commander of the army in the Revolutionary War. No big deal. And you know, obviously was part of writing the freakin DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Stand up dude, all around.
After the war, JFA became a diplomat for America. He went to France, Holland and eventually Great Britain. And it's basically all because of him that we're an independent nation today. He was away from his family this whole time and worked super hard to not only stop France from asserting their power over the states, but to develop agreements with the other countries to finance and protect our developing nation. I don't want to say that we'd be fucked without him, but we would have been.
AND THEN, GDUBS was "unanimously elected" to the presidency because all those fuckers on the Republican side schemed to get people to vote for him over John Adams. And John Adams was a fucking awesome Veep. He stood by GDUBS side and took all the flack for anything that went wrong.
Then, when it came time for him to be President, everyone shit ALL OVER HIM. It was fucking ridiculous! People in his own party were dicks. The Republicans were dicks. EVEN HIS BFF THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS A DICK. (Side note, Fuck Thomas Jefferson.) People basically treated him like shit. He had a lot of great accomplishments, like, NOT going to war against France and standing our ground as a neutral power. He created the Navy. But no, "he was a power grubbing fuckhead," according to everyone else.
Side note, I see a lot of parallels between Adams and Obama. There was this Republican newspaper that used to write nasty things about John Adams (Hello, Fox News!) and the Republicans did everything in their power to undermine his authority (hmmm sounds familiar) and even people in his own party shit talked him (Go fuck yourself Alexander Hamilton.) ALSO, like Obama, JFA had a KICKASS wife, Abagail. She was smart as hell and talked a lot of sense into Adams when he became a hot head. He obviously loved her a ton, and it was really sad to read about their time apart and when SPOILER ALERT she died before him. One of the truly great loves like Barack and Michelle or Sid and Nancy.
And all these fuckheads schemed their way out of getting him re-elected and putting TJ in power. But JFA got them. He appointed all these cabinet positions like twenty minutes before his term ended as a big giant fuck you.
TJ did a lot to counteract JFA's measures as prez, like disband the Navy and some of his shadier laws like the "Don't Shit Talk the President" law. Eventually, karma got to TJ though. His cronies at the papers turned against him and leaked the story about him fucking his slaves and being a prick. And other countries attacked the US and he sure as fuck wish he had that Navy.
Speaking of TJ, he was an asshole. He and Adams were super tight during the Revolution. They spent tons of time together and had nothing but wonderful things to say about one another. But THEN, JFA gained in popularity and clearly was the successor to GDUBS for the presidency, and so TJ turned on him. He used to write shit anonymously about him in the papers and scheme against him and undermine him. AND THEN once he became President, he realized how hard it was but STILL WOULDN'T APOLOGIZE. He used to write him all these fucked up letters, blaming him for shit he didn't do, and then telling JFA how fucked up it was. FINALLY when they were old, Adams was like, "Bro, I still love you!" and they became BFFs again. (I will admit I teared up when they became bros again. THEY JUST LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH!)
CRAZY FUN FACT: They died on the SAME DAY, within hours of one another. on JULY FOURTH.
Another thing that pissed me off is how much they'd twist shit around on Adams. He was a Federalist, yeah, but like, just because he felt that the country needed a strong central government to band together it was NOT BECAUSE HE WANTED TO BE KING. But obviously that was WAY TOO DIFFICULT for those assholes on the Republican side to understand. And people misconstrued his passion for insanity, even WELL AFTER he left office.
So let's recap why I loved John Adams so much:
Smart as fuck.
Totally great lawyer.
Didn't own slaves or stand for slavery.
Basically responsible for US being independent nation.
Loyal veep.
Responsible President, promoting peace during wartime.
Genuine good dude and didn't fuck over his asshole friends.
Did everything for the good of the nation, even if the nation treated him like shit.
So now that I've rambled on and on about John Adams, let's get into our rating system.
Would I talk about this book while drunk? I LITERALLY CANNOT STOP. I am such a fucking nerd. I have such a metaphorical hard on for John Adams that I find myself bringing him up in every single conversation since I finished the first section of this book.
Would I recommend this book while drunk? Hell to the fucking yes. It was really well written and I found it to be super captivating. I liked how much DMC focused on his prime years, rather than shit that didn't matter. Like, Chernow's GDUBS book was good, but some shit about his childhood, I really only needed the bare bones. I also find myself so obsessed with it, that I went out and bought the TJ book today so that I could read it soon because I'm hoping it will be like a sequel.
Alright dudes, I've spent enough time going on and on about our second president. #sorrynotsorry. Night!
