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    Samuel Adams: A Life
    Samuel Adams: A Life
    Samuel Adams: A Life
    Audiobook10 hours

    Samuel Adams: A Life

    Written by Ira Stoll

    Narrated by Paul Boehmer

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    About this audiobook

    "I pity Mr. Sam Adams," his cousin John Adams wrote to his wife, "for he was born a Rebel." At virtually every juncture of the American Revolution, from the Boston Massacre and Tea Party to Lexington and Concord and the ratification of the Constitution, Samuel Adams played a forceful role. With his fiery rhetoric and religious fervor, he was in many respects the moral conscience of the new nation. "The love of liberty," he thundered, "is interwoven in the soul of man, and can never be totally extinguished."

    And yet history has neglected him; today Samuel Adams is best known as a brand of beer. As relations with Great Britain healed in the nineteenth century, historians were all too willing to dismiss him as a zealot; Adams's distrust of secularism (he envisioned America as a "Christian Sparta") has not endeared him to many contemporary scholars, either. Ira Stoll's fascinating biography not only restores this figure to his rightful place in history but portrays him as a man of God whose skepticism of a powerful central government, uncompromising support for freedom of the press, concern about the influence of money on elections, voluble love of liberty, and selfless endurance in a war for freedom has enormous relevance to Americans today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 18, 2008
    ISBN9781400179787
    Author

    Ira Stoll

    Ira Stoll was vice president and managing editor of The New York Sun, which he helped to found. He has been a consultant to the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, an editor of the Jerusalem Post, managing editor and Washington correspondent of the Forward, editor of Smartertimes.com, and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He is a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Harvard College. He lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Samuel Adams

    4/5

    49 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Very well written book, smart, informative without being too scholarly/academic . Another great man, who fought for our freedom. I would recommend this to anyone .

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Samuel Adams is as fierce a patriot as their was. But this biographer may love him too much and gives him credit for almost everything under the sun. Still enjoyed it. But there is a new biography coming out this year I’ll look forward to reading.
    • 3/5
      I would give this book 2.5 stars if possible. The book was what I would call a very general overview of the the life of Sam Adams. I enjoyed parts of it, especially the latter parts of the book that covered Adams' life in the Continental Congress and his role in the Legislature and Executive branches of the Massachusetts Government.

      My problems with this book were a few:

      1. The author references too many other historians when making historical points. It felt like more of a research paper at times than the writings of an historian making his own judgements and reflections.

      2. There were too many quotes. I enjoy a narrative history with quotes mixed in, but there were far too many quotes from Adams about his religious views for example.

      3. It was too short. There were many places, especially the post Revolutionary War period, where we learn about what is going on in history with little of Adams' role or thoughts on the matter. The author admits toward the end of the book that there is very little writing of Adams compared to the other founders, but I still expected more from this book considering how much has been written on this period.
    • 5/5
      Thomas Jefferson called Samuel Adams “truly the man of the Revolution.” Adams, filled with religious fervor, inspired others to fight on and overcome the challenges of the Revolutionary War. He was the editor of the influential Boston Gazette, planner of the Boston Tea Party, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and yet, he is largely ignored and unknown today. Understanding the leading part Adams played in building and sustaining support for the revolutionary cause gives readers new insight into the way religion motivated the founding of America.
    • 4/5
      When you read a biography like this you just want to shake the subject of the book and ask them why in God's name they destroyed their letters and writings. This would have been a fantastic book if we could have understood the mind of Adams in his relationship to his wife and children which is missing from here, and his personal relationships with other revolutionaries.BUT that doesn't negate the effect of the book that is there. The author did a masterful job of giving us the patriot that we never knew. Adams was the man that started the revolution and designed the government of this country and of his home state of Massachusetts. He was so highly thought of by his contemporaries that he was elected or appointed to nearly every committee for every important movement including the Boston Tea Party, the Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He was everywhere, representing the people he knew and we are the better for it. He pushed other people to move on the ideas he had and was so reviled by King George that he and John Hancock were the only two with a bounty on their heads. And yet he didn't quit.I am thrilled that I read this book because he would have been unknown in my life and I would have been poorer for not having known him.
    • 5/5
      This was an examination or telling of the life of Samuel Adams and why we should remember him. I have to admit I have a bias towards this revolutionary figure as I did several research projects/papers on his life and legacy. I picked this book up with wide eyes, drooling a bit and read it with great interest. I often wondered why he was mentioned as often as John Adams or other Founding Brothers/Fathers. This book does a great job of humanizing this individual....he was not perfect, he was not always tolerant of other ideas and his personal life was not all unicorns and rainbows. Perhaps I have an attachment to this figure because I have discovered that unlike his peers sitting atop pedestals and pictured on currency, he was an imperfect human and I can relate to that.
    • 2/5
      Very dry to read...otherwise it was not a pleasant experience...the last chapter was the only one I enjoyed...
    • 4/5
      I have never really liked biographies where the goal is simply to tear down a historic figure leaving nothing left to admire. However, with the popularity surge of a David McCullough and his books, such as John Adams, it has become OK to tell history in the narrative form extolling the virtues of the historical character and giving some mention of their faults. Sam Adams : a life goes a little bit to far. While Samuel Adams is certainly a founding father that we should know about, Stoll goes a little bit overboard in telling of the virtues of this man. While Stoll has certainly done his research, too often he doesn't have the facts to back up his statements. Too often Stoll alludes to implying that Adams "could have been involved in an event", but we don't know for sure. However. I am glad that someone did take the time to do a biography about Samuel Adams. As Stoll mentions, during the beginning of the revolution, he was the better known of the Adams cousins. I also appreciate the effort that Stoll goes to to relay the importance of Adams faith and beliefs in his decision making process. Again, while I think Stoll goes to far in trying to relay the virtues of Samuel Adams, I would rather see him make this mistake than the one of tearing down this founding father. I would recommend this biography.