A highly readable and insightful biography of John Quincy Adams, a complex, brilliant, and often contentious and cantankerous man.

James Roger Sharp, Syracuse University

The most impressive single volume to date on the foreign policies of John Quincy Adams. It is a succinct but comprehensive account of one of America's most distinguished diplomatists. Lews presents Adams's failures as well as his successes, his shortcomings as well as his virtues, while observing the consistency of a statesman whose devotion to a strong union never wavered in the face of changing political environments.

Lawrence S. Kaplan, emeritus director, Lyman L. Lemnitzer Center for NATO and European Union Studies

This book should be required reading not only for students of early American diplomatic history, but for anyone interested in the political history of the United States in its formative decades.

Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor, University of Virginia, and author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nat