Education of Henry Adams

One of the most well-known autobiographies ever written, The Education of Henry Adams is told in the third person. It begins with his early life in Quincy, Massachusetts, and moves through Harvard College, diplomacy, journalism, and his encounters with the era's greatest thinkers. Adams claims his education repeatedly let him down-but this is a charade; historian David S. Brown calls it the book's greatest irony.The grandson and great-grandson of two presidents, Adams moved in early middle age to Washington and produced landmark works in history. He distributed a privately printed edition in 1907; it wasn't published widely until 1918, the year he died. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1919, and in 1999 a Modern Library panel placed it first on its list of the best nonfiction books of the twentieth century.Perfect for readers who appreciate intellectual memoirs and American historical narratives, this masterpiece offers an unparalleled window into the mind of one of America's most perceptive observers.