America's Founding Son

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"A riveting account of the extraordinary life of John Quincy Adams, America's sixth president." --Ken Burns, award-winning filmmaker

"Brilliantly rendered...every page crackles with fresh insights and telling anecdotes." --Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author, and professor of history at Rice University

An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation's greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers.

During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the Civil War, John Quincy Adams was the man standing in the breach. After an unsuccessful presidential reelection campaign, he was left reckoning with his political legacy. But Adams would be dragged back into the fray in ways he never expected, pitting him against the slavocracy and Southern congressmen and solidifying him as a key ally to the antislavery cause.

America's Founding Son tells the tale of Adams's turbulent government career and his evolving views on slavery. Adams, along with lesser-known abolitionists Benjamin Lundy and Theodore Weld, found himself at the center of the coalition that leveled the first blow against slave power in the United States. The battles they fought would be foundational in the push for emancipation to follow. An entertaining deep dive into an under explored period in American history, America's Founding Son shows how John Quincy Adams and the grassroots activism of the 1830s and '40s shifted American politics forever.