For reasons unknown but to God, Americans like to devour cinder-block-size political memoirs written by ghost hacks without style for pygmy statesmen without substance. Should President Obama delay his apotheosis so as to manufacture such a tome, perhaps it will be called “Moi! Not Since Einstein !” And Hillary Clinton ’s next doorstop, whether or not she makes it back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: “Mein Kampf to Regain the Throne.” Even Henry Kissinger , brilliant of substance, is possessed of a style only a small helping of which could stock a large cement works until the sun explodes. Rather than pay $35 to spend 1,000 pages watching an egomaniac grind an ax, why not part with $21.95, as I did in the museum shop at Monticello, for The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, covering 1777 to 1826. Two truly great statesmen and a wonderful woman write in confidence and ofttimes under stress about the dangers and glories of the American Founding, its philosophical basis, the early development of the republic, the rise of party, their personal tragedies, their hopes, disappointments and observations of war, the courts of Europe, the American landscape, theology, the classics and their famous contemporaries (did you know that, according to Adams, Washington was forced not to seek another term?). In these letters, our second and third presidents, whose intellectual powers have not been surpassed by their successors except perhaps by Abraham Lincoln, enchant the reader with prose (especially Jefferson’s) that is a pleasure to read for its rhythm and flow. Jefferson was profoundly radical, Adams profoundly conservative, Abigail profoundly graceful, and to be brought close to them truly is a joy.
Contribution to The Wall Street Journal, “Twelve Months of Reading.” Dec. 12, 2014.
