The pleasure of reading the Education," wrote Alfred Kazin,"is the pleasure of reading a work of literature made up,literally, from historical facts . . . It is the pleasure of seeinghistory come alive, of seeing it move, of seeing behind history tothe actions and actors. It is the pleasure of seeing revealed thehumanity so often concealed in history. His political ideals shaped by two presidentialancestors--great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John QuincyAdams--Henry Adams was one of the most powerful and original mindsto confront the American scene from the Civil War to the FirstWorld War. Privately printed in 1907 and published to wide acclaimshortly after the author's death in 1918, Adams's Education is lessa memoir and more a work of brilliant history which charts thegreat transformation in nineteenth-century American intellectuallife. A work of profound lyricism, enormous humanity, andremarkable prescience, The Education of Henry Adams presents aworld poised between the certainties
