This is an engrossing story, which Wood tells with a mastery of detail and a modern plainness of expression that makes a refreshing contrast with the 18th-century locutions of his subjects ... Wood acknowledges the force of Adams’s fears. He also clearly admires him as a contrarian: 'In all of American history, no political leader of Adams’s stature, and certainly no president, has ever so emphatically denied the belief in American exceptionalism'...Jefferson he finds too sunny for this world...In the end, however, Wood, almost against his inclinations, declares Jefferson the winner of this philosophical smack-down. The proof of the theory is in the eating. Jefferson explained, as well as anyone, how democracy could work; since America has endured, it is at least possible that Jefferson was right.
He isn't afraid to critique the men; Friends Divided is far from a hagiography. Wood calls attention to Jefferson's misogyny and racism — hardly unusual for a man of his time, but still notable for a man who is routinely lionized in American society ... One of the most fascinating parts of Friends Divided is Wood's account of the two presidents' reconciliation ... Friends Divided is an engaging book that's sure to appeal to anyone with an abiding interest in Revolution-era America and the leaders who shaped the country. Beautifully written and with real insight into Jefferson and Adams, it's a worthy addition to the canon, and yet another compelling book from Wood.
...a splendid account of the improbable friendship, estrangement and reconciliation between Adams, an irascible, ironic, hypersensitive middle-class New England lawyer, and Jefferson, a self-contained, diplomatic, slaveholding Virginia aristocrat ... Wood claims that Adams was too skeptical, contrarian and cynical and too much inclined to question just about every element of the American dream to capture the imaginations of his fellow Americans. Wood is right — for most of American history. But he leaves you wondering which Founding Father is more likely to connect in 2017 with our all too anxious and angry, partisan, polarized and paralyzed nation.
...[a] lucid and learned dual biography ... Mr. Wood wants to admire the democratic Jefferson more than the skeptical Adams, but biographical details often pull the author toward reversing that assessment. If Jefferson was the smoother politician, Adams seems the better man to Mr. Wood...But, ultimately, this reversal will not do for Mr. Wood or, he insists, America. In the epilogue, he scuttles back to more-familiar assessments ... In the end, Mr. Wood casts Americans as needing consoling illusions because they cannot face 'stubborn facts.' If so, the true pessimist is not Adams but Mr. Wood.
Revolutionary-era historian Gordon S. Wood, in Friends Divided, his latest book on the period, makes clear just how fragile the American experiment had become once Washington retired to Mount Vernon ... Wood tells that story through the remarkable, stormy friendship of Adams and Jefferson ... Again and again, Wood reveals the depth of a lifetime spent studying the Revolutionary period. He never lapses into simplified assessments, taking the time to research and explain nuanced conclusions ... Though he clearly admires both Adams and Jefferson, and sees much of their yin-yang political differences as important to the development of the United States, Wood concludes that there is a very good reason for Jefferson’s lasting popularity and Adams’ comparative anonymity.
This magisterial double biography recounts not only the lives of these two greatest founders but also the creation of the republic. It describes the world’s first successful democratic revolution and the founding of the first non-monarchical republic. It has nothing of military strategies or engagements or war heroes; it is a book about ideas as represented by two philosophical statesmen, and it makes political history and philosophy exciting … The author provides a magnificent account of the thinking that went into the creation of individual state constitutions after independence was declared; he reveals how the states’ experiences aided the creation of a national government built on three branches … As the two founders agreed in their final correspondence, no one but they could ever write an accurate history of their times. Wood comes close.
That Wood has written Friends Divided — a finely-crafted dual biography of Adams and Jefferson — is therefore a hearty cause for celebration. Every page sparkles with literary eloquence, flawless analysis, and dramatically plotted history that contains a lesson for a riven time ... The structural device Wood employs involves systematically juxtaposing the differences between the aristocratic planter Jefferson of Virginia and the self-made lawyer Adams of Massachusetts ...looks at how their divergent philosophical views about the epochal Enlightenment and French Revolution played out, letting readers decide for themselves the righteousness of each argument ... By the end of Friends Divided it’s clear that these two icons knew they were tied at history’s hip.
Though the two men were thus joined in the public’s memory, they could not have been more different in their personalities, in their private lives, in their political outlooks, and in their contributions to the new order—a theme artfully developed by Gordon S. Wood in Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson... It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gordon Wood has written better and more extensively than anyone about the events and leading figures in that formative period of U.S. history ...nicely crafted in Professor Wood’s usual style, does not add anything substantially new about the two men or about their relationship with one another, nor does it challenge the conventional interpretation of the relative importance of Jefferson and Adams in subsequent debates...does succeed in adding a great deal of depth and detail to the relationship between Jefferson and Adams.
The author is especially adroit at explaining how Adams’ ambassadorship to England and Jefferson’s ambassadorship to France altered their views of the world and to some extent accelerated the conflicts between them. Wood also clearly explains Jefferson’s popularity among nonhistorians, while Adams often seems overlooked in lay discussions of early American history. Among the other well-known personages in the narrative are Abigail Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Rush, all portrayed vividly by the author, whose approachable writing style is equal to his impressive archival research. An illuminating history of early Americans that is especially timely in the ugly, partisan-filled age of Trump.
Wood glides through the political intricacies and intrigues of the times, offering incisive analyses, especially of the ongoing debate over slavery, finely illuminating the minds of Adams and Jefferson.
