Henry Adams and the book ‘The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography’

It was many years ago, upon graduating from undergraduate school with a degree in language and an appreciation for history that I came to the book The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography. Henry Adams, the grandson and great grandson of former United States presidents John Quincy Adams and John Adams, was an American historian, diplomat, and posthumously awarded the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for biography for the book we are looking at today.

(Henry Adams, working at a desk, wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography).

Henry Adams lived from 1838 to 1918. The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography serves at one level as the autobiography of a man from Boston, Massachusetts looking back on his life and the coming changes for society due to the Industrial Revolution for a man who grew up and lived in a much different world. Adams uses his notion of education as received through parts of Europe, America and experience to draw a picture for what the coming age might mean for those looking to make their way in the world.

(From left, US presidents John Adams and John Quicy Adams, the great grandfather and grandfather of Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Adams).

The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography is not so much an autobiography in the traditional sense. The reader is not given a recounting of the deeds and accomplishments of a either of Adams‘ presidential ancestors, nor of the Henry Adams book History of the United States during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The book instead looks into technological, social, political, and intellectual changes that Henry Adams was able to observe and discuss. The notion of these being stated in terms of the education of a man, himself, served as a literary device for humor at the author’s own expense.

(Henry Adams wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography).

The timeframe that Henry James reviews in The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography is from his service in the United Kingdom during the American Civil War through World War One. That a degree of familiarity with the notion of wireless communication, as we recently mentioned with our review of Erik Larson‘s Thunderstruck, was an unanticipated yet happy discovery.

(Henry Adams wrote the self-effacing book The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography).

That The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography offers humorous self-criticism helps what I dealt with in needing to educate myself on some of the historical figures referenced throughout the text. An audience 100-years ago, or one more versed in the people of history through the historic period, would fair better than I did. I rate The Education of Henry James: An Autobiography by Henry James at 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Wednesday, June 30, 2021