Passionate Sage
The Character and Legacy of John Adams
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Narrated by:
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Tom Parker
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By:
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Joseph J. Ellis
About this listen
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Critic reviews
"Parker narrates this intellectual tour de force with strength and wit. His unvoiced reading matches the text wonderfully. His reading present the complexity of thought clearly." ( Kliatt)
"Capture[s] the man's appealing spirit, providing new perspective on an unfairly neglected Founding Father." ( Kirkus Reviews)
Related to this topic
-
American Sphinx
- The Character of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Susan O'Malley
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight. Historian Joseph J. Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams".
-
-
So: they did the DNA and … time to change appendix
- By Jamanosa on 11-03-21
By: Joseph J. Ellis
-
The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
-
-
Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
-
Founding Brothers
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- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
-
-
Great!
- By Gotta Tellya on 08-10-16
By: Joseph J. Ellis
-
Agony and Eloquence
- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution
- By: Daniel L. Mallock
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
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-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The drama of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is the foundational story of America - courage, loyalty, hope, fanaticism, greatness, failure, forgiveness, love. Agony and Eloquence is the story of the greatest friendship in American history and the revolutionary times in which it was made, ruined, and finally renewed. In the wake of Washington's retirement, longtime friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to represent the opposing political forces struggling to shape America's future.
-
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Great Listen
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Revolutionary Characters
- What Made the Founders Different
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
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Story
Gordon Wood's wondrous accomplishment here is to bring these men and their times down to earth and within our reach, showing us just who they were and what drove them. In so doing, he shows us that although a lot has changed in two hundred years, to an amazing degree the virtues these founders defined for themselves are the virtues we aspire to still.
-
-
Wood clearly dislikes Adams
- By Michael on 01-15-07
By: Gordon S. Wood
-
Friends Divided
- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government.
-
-
A Great Read
- By Jean on 12-22-17
By: Gordon S. Wood
-
American Sphinx
- The Character of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Susan O'Malley
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight. Historian Joseph J. Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams".
-
-
So: they did the DNA and … time to change appendix
- By Jamanosa on 11-03-21
By: Joseph J. Ellis
-
The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
-
-
Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
-
Founding Brothers
- The Revolutionary Generation (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
-
-
Great!
- By Gotta Tellya on 08-10-16
By: Joseph J. Ellis
-
Agony and Eloquence
- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution
- By: Daniel L. Mallock
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The drama of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is the foundational story of America - courage, loyalty, hope, fanaticism, greatness, failure, forgiveness, love. Agony and Eloquence is the story of the greatest friendship in American history and the revolutionary times in which it was made, ruined, and finally renewed. In the wake of Washington's retirement, longtime friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to represent the opposing political forces struggling to shape America's future.
-
-
Great Listen
- By Kyle B. on 03-12-21
-
Revolutionary Characters
- What Made the Founders Different
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gordon Wood's wondrous accomplishment here is to bring these men and their times down to earth and within our reach, showing us just who they were and what drove them. In so doing, he shows us that although a lot has changed in two hundred years, to an amazing degree the virtues these founders defined for themselves are the virtues we aspire to still.
-
-
Wood clearly dislikes Adams
- By Michael on 01-15-07
By: Gordon S. Wood
-
Friends Divided
- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government.
-
-
A Great Read
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By: Gordon S. Wood
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- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 27 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fresh and lively biography rich in literary analysis and new historical detail, Fred Kaplan brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams - the little known and much misunderstood sixth president of the United States and the first son of John and Abigail Adams - and persuasively demonstrates how Adams's inspiring, progressive vision guided his life and helped shape the course of America.
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Destined by birth, mentored by greats...
- By Jonathan Love on 03-04-16
By: Fred Kaplan
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Practicing History
- Selected Essays
- By: Barbara W. Tuchman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history".
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Barbara Tuchman fan faced with reality
- By J. Whittle on 09-27-18
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Thomas Jefferson
- A Biography of Spirit and Flesh
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.
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This version is the standard non in depth bio
- By Fred F on 03-28-24
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann, Jon Meacham
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era.
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A Man and Biography Relevant to Our Day
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-12
By: Jon Meacham
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"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"
- Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed, Peter S. Onuf
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
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Thomas Jefferson is still presented today as a hopelessly enigmatic figure despite being written about more than any other Founding Father. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom even as he held people in bondage, Jefferson is variably described by current-day observers as a hypocrite, an atheist, and a simple-minded proponent of limited government.
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Disappointing
- By Steve on 06-09-16
By: Annette Gordon-Reed, and others
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Marx's General
- The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels
- By: Tristram Hunt
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Friedrich Engels is one of the most intriguing and contradictory figures of the 19th century. Born to a prosperous Prussian mercantile family, he spent his life working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable upper-middle-class existence of a Victorian gentleman.
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Not many choices here anyways.
- By Prof. Neil Larsen on 02-16-13
By: Tristram Hunt
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The American Political Tradition
- And the Men Who Made it
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Christopher Lasch - foreword
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics", Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
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The Long March
- How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
- By: Roger Kimball
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The architects of America's cultural revolution of the 1960s were Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and celebrated figures like Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, and Susan Sontag. In examining the lives and works of those who spoke for the 1960s, Roger Kimball conceives a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead-ends, and blind alleys.
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The Long March
- By Suzanne on 05-16-06
By: Roger Kimball
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George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: Former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radical change without their colonists’ consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783.
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In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.
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Shallow and unsatisfying
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What listeners say about Passionate Sage
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Detailed Shopper
- 08-20-21
Old Man John The Balance Scale of Optimism
Ellis provides an insightful and charming analysis of Adam's psychology and political thought. Adams the national curmudgeonly grandpa is probably my favorite founding father. He wanted to be understood, respected, and loved for who he really was, warts and all. He seemed to extend the same understanding to others close to him, most of the time. That's pretty reassuring. I love that he encouraged his daughter-in-law Louisa's confidence. I wish I had a grandpa like that. If he had been listened to a bit more, would American exceptionalist arrogance have ever have caused so much trouble? Would we have so many problems with founders being worshiped as demigods? I'm inclined to think we would be a bit more careful, but only a bit.
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- John
- 09-04-21
The Revolutionary Generation’s Supreme Realist
It’s impossible to choose a favorite Founder. Much like the balanced government they established, each man seems to act as a check and corrective on the intellectual excesses and spiritual shortcomings of his fellows, making it hard to subscribe fully to any single Founder’s views. Still, if forced to choose, I’d select John Adams, and Joseph Ellis, with his typical penetrating insights and lucid style, presents a vivid exposition of the reasons why.
Focusing on the last quarter century of Adams’ long life, we see him wrestling with his bitterness at electoral defeat, defending his record in interminable newspaper articles, arguing with authors in the margins of their books, and mending fences with former friends and political opponents, Thomas Jefferson being only the most famous.
Reasons why I’d select the dumpy, grumpy sage of Quincy as Favorite Founder are most apparent in the marginalia and correspondence. On the French Revolution and it’s Jeffersonian enthusiasts:
“Amidst all the exultations, Americans and Frenchmen should remember that the perfectibility of man is only human and terrestrial perfectibility...disease and vice will continue to disorder, and death to terrify mankind.”
Or, on the true motivation behind our drive for wealth and power:
“In this, ‘who will love me then?’ there is a key to the human heart, to the history of human life and manners, and to the rise and fall of empires.”
Adams’ scattershot, somewhat volcanic literary style—the byproduct of his passionate yet less-than-systematic thinking—means that his ideas are sometimes better summarized by Ellis:
“As Adams saw it, political theory of the grandiose sort was invariable ‘ideology’, an organized collection of seductive hopes and wishes, a systematic way of going wrong with confidence…theoretical wisdom, and therefore a contradiction in terms.”
“Adams was the supreme political realist of the revolutionary generation. His lifelong habit of mistrusting himself effectively immunized him against illusory solutions to the problems of political power…”
So, turning a half-blind eye to his painfully hypersensitive nature, sometimes ungovernable temper, and strident anti-Catholic bigotry, I embrace his intellectual ebullience, his engrained skepticism of fashionable thinking, his courage to make the right decision regardless of the political price tag, and his faith that history—in other words, that you and I—would eventually recognize that he was right. And in so many cases, he is.
A measure of the book’s many excellences is the fact that, despite a rather timeworn (1995) recording, I listened without really noticing. The writing, the subject, the insights presented, and a superb performance by Tom Parker (aka Grover Gardener) overrode all mere technical issues.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rick Reed
- 01-22-21
Irascible, Honest, Brilliant- JA =#1
My favorite Founding Father. Joseph Ellis digs deep into the English language to bring John Adams to life
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- Timothy Mapes
- 03-21-23
An interesting Look
This book show a view of what the World looked through the eyes of an aging John Adams. His regrets and triumphs
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- Chuck Farley
- 04-25-22
Diversity - Not a new concept.
Adams epitomizes what it really means to be a progressive conservative. it is almost scary how clearly he saw the struggles we would face and still have to face as a nation.
Some of the most successful progressive / liberal presidents claimed Jeffersonian ideals for political expediency, but utilized the principles of John Adams to govern.
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- Tom Parks
- 06-15-22
John Adams was a Titan
Few, if any, people have contributed more integrity or substance to the founding of America; to its ideals, dreams, and direction.
Often overshadowed by Jefferson and Washington, Adams was an amazing man, husband, father, diplomat, philosopher, and many othet things. He, in many ways, was the 3rd term of Washington, continuing with many of policies.
Adams was "always and honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad" according to Jefferson and Franklin. I believe the maddening thing about him was his immovable commitment to doing what he thought was right.
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- DM
- 03-11-21
loved it! great man
I feel every book I read about a founding father is the best book ever. even this guy. he had his faults but still turned out to be amazing. enjoyed learning more about him after his presidency.
Seriously underrated as a revolutionary hero, as a man, as president.
Way more forward thinking than maybe anyone else's in his time.
Needs lots more time and pages dedicated to him.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Chuck B.
- 07-06-16
The Legacy of John Adams
An indelible portrait of this magnificent Patriot and Founding Father. More than a biography, Ellis gives us a glimpse of the man with all of his foibles and his greatness, of not just what he thought but the core beliefs behind what he thought and what shaped him. And Tom Parker's narration is perfect in every sense. Highly recommended.
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- Arizona Wildcat
- 10-13-24
A Treasured Summary of John Adams
I learned so much from this masterful compilation of the thoughts and life of John Adams!
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- Tim
- 05-04-21
Author does not like John Adams
Usually when you read a biography, the author LOVES the subject and you have to discount their claims and tone. Ellis does not like John Adams. It's a bit disconcerting but the overall content is stellar.
John Adams was a vain and difficult man, but no more so than any other world changer. His overall temperament was judicious. Ellis makes him seem like a maniac.
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