John Adams relies heavily on the letters that Adams wrote and received from his wife, and from various people in congress.

I was really impressed by level of the everyone’s writing in the 18th century. Even in short, private letters to his wife, his prose is very elegant.

I shudder to think that if, by some unlikely turn of events, I were to become a famous historical figure, some future historian might use this horrid little blog to reconstruct my life. Maybe I should try to improve my writing skills, just in case I become president someday.

McCullough basically edited together these letters along with the diary entries of all the characters of the revolution, and made it into a novel. Though I am not an expert in novels, but the book seems to follow all the rules of character development, etc, which makes it much more pleasant to read than a list of dates and events.

There is perhaps a bit more detail than one would like in a regular novel. I was not always interested to know what Adams ate for dinner all the time. Nonetheless, it was interesting enough that I voluntarily read 750 pages of history. I suppose that fact recommends the book highly enough of itself.

I give John Adams 5 Jihadis out of 5

This is the first (and so far, only) book that I’ve read entirely on my new Kindle. I had no problems with eyestrain (or any problems at all, for that matter). I think that for massive, 750 page books, the Kindle is ideal. It’s just not fun to hold a big heavy book in your hands, especially when you are near the beginning or end, and the book get very unbalanced.

I spent a good bit of this past weekend on airplanes, and I was very glad to have my Kindle with me. With an 8GB SD card, my kindle will hold 8,200 books. I recently learned that Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books was the largest in North America during his lifetime, and I can hold more than that in the palm of my hand, crammed into my coach seat, as I hear over the intercom that we are “9th in line for takeoff.”