The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams

David S. Brown, Elizabethtown College

Historian David Brown sheds light on the life and times of Henry Adams, perhaps the most eclectic accomplished and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist. Presenting intimate and insightful details of a fascinating and unusual American life and a new window on nineteenth century US history, Brown offers us a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before.