Sons of Adamses.

America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918, by Richard Brookhiser (Free Press, 244 pp., $25)

The United States has been so democratic, and its society so fluid, that the very idea that the nation could spawn a dynasty seems positively un-American. In truth, families that have been rich or powerful for more than two generations have been rare. Moreover, as historian Bert Folsom has convincingly shown, vertical mobility has repeatedly been bidirectional, up and down: Families have gone from riches to rags quite as frequently as from rags to riches.

The major exception was the Adams family of Massachusetts: In the telling of NR senior editor Richard Brookhiser, they were America's first dynasty. The patriarch was John Adams, a principal architect of independence, minister to the Court of St. James's, first vice president, second president, and incidentally the author of serious works in history and political philosophy. Next came his son, John Quincy Adams, a person so precociously learned as to boggle the imagination, whose first diplomatic post came when he was in his twenties, who went on to have an eminently successful career as the leading American diplomat of his era, reaching a climax as secretary of state. In that position he negotiated important treaties with Britain and Spain and formulated the Monroe Doctrine. Then came his less-than-successful term as president. (Brookhiser wryly points out that, though efforts have been made during the last few decades to rehabilitate John Adams's presidency, efforts to salvage J.Q.'s have been negligible "because the task is so obviously impossible.") But J.Q. had a significant career after he left the presidency, serving 17 years in the House of Representatives, where he was an outspoken enemy of slaveholders and their congressmen.

The next two generations never held such exalted positions, but they were major figures nonetheless. The most significant public service of Charles Francis Adams, J.Q.'s son, was as American minister to London during the Civil War, in which capacity he was instrumental in persuading the British government not to grant formal recognition to the Confederacy. Had it done that, Britain and France would likely have offered to arbitrate the conflict, and that in turn would almost certainly have ensured the independence of the South. Charles Francis was thus a key figure in preserving the nation his grandfather had helped bring into existence. Charles Francis's third son, Henry Adams, would among other things become one of the greatest historians the United States has ever produced; his nine-volume History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison is still regarded as a classic.

These four Adamses, it should be pointed out, were not entirely characteristic of the family line. Along the way, among the various brothers and offspring, were a number of no-goodniks and a surprising number of alcoholics. Perhaps that last is not so surprising, for even John Quincy partook deeply of the sauce: As an old man he correctly identified 11 of 14 Madeiras in a blind taste test. There may have been a propensity for alcoholism in the genetic pool; or, as Charles Francis put it, "vices are hereditary in families." For all that, Brookhiser is on solid ground in regarding the foursome as a dynasty.

In treating them as such, the author took on a formidable task. Not the least challenging part was the depth and breadth of understanding of American history that it entailed. The Adamses, even Henry, were at or near the centers of power in every major facet of American development from the Revolution until World War I, and to comprehend the men it is necessary to know the story well enough to be able to sketch in the big picture without losing sight of the individual subjects. The difficulty was compounded by Brookhiser's decision to do ...