John Quincy Adams - Bibliography

Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 , 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1874–1877), is an indispensable record of Adams's reactions to events. Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794–1845: American Diplomacy, and Political, Social, and Intellectual Life, from Washington to Polk (New York, 1969), is a selection from the diary by an informed historian. Walter La Feber, ed., John Quincy Adams and American Continental Empire: Letters, Papers, and Speeches (Chicago, 1965), contains other important documents. Marie B. Hecht, John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man (New York, 1972), is competent, fact-filled, and sensible. Mary W. M. Hargreaves, The Presidency of John Quincy Adams (Lawrence, Kans., 1985), is a useful single-volume summary of his term. Lynn H. Parsons, John Quincy Adams: A Bibliography (Westport, Conn., 1993), is a thorough book-length list of sources for further research.

Marcus Cunliffe, The Nation Takes Shape, 1789–1837 (Chicago, 1959), is a well-written account of the political background. George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings (New York, 1952), and The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (New York, 1965), are gracefully written, highly informed, and intellectually sophisticated. Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979), is an unconvincing but interesting analysis of Adams's beliefs. Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York, 1949), and John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York, 1956), present perceptive evaluations of Adams's contributions by a pioneer American diplomatic historian. A more recent consideration is William E. Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington, Ky., 1992).

Robert V. Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson (Philadelphia, 1963), and Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 (New York, 1981), provide respectively an invaluable study of how the new Jacksonian party organized to defeat Adams and an informed and controversial interpretation of the politics of the period. Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics , rev. ed. (Homewood, Ill., 1978), gives the social, cultural, and economic as well as political background of the antebellum decades. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828–1848 (New York, 1959), is a balanced account of national politics during that period.

Recent works include Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life (New York, 1997), which draws extensively upon the lifelong journals kept by Adams. Richard Brookhiser, America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918 (New York, 2002), profiles four generations of the Adams family, focusing on the two presidents, John Quincy's son Charles, and Charles's son Henry. See also Robert V. Remini, John Quincy Adams (New York, 2002).