John Quincy Adams

New York: Times Books, 2002. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 172 pages. Frontis illus., notes, milestones, bibliography, index, slight wear and soiling to DJ. Robert Vincent Remini (July 17, 1921 - March 28, 2013) was an American historian and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He wrote numerous works about President Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian Era. For the third volume of Andrew Jackson, subtitled The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, he won the 1984 U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction. He also wrote biographies of Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Joseph Smith and Daniel Webster. On April 28, 2005, Remini was appointed the Historian of the United States House of Representatives, a post he held until 2010. Earlier, Remini had been asked by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington to write a Congressional history, The House, which was published in 2006. He retired in 2010. Part of The American Presidents series, general editor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. A dedicated expansionist and defender of human rights, John Quincy Adams was the first president to advance a wide-ranging program of national development by which the United States could ultimately achieve world power and increase the happiness and prosperity of the American people. After serving one presidential term, Adams served nine consecutive terms in the House of Representatives, earning the nickname "Old Man Eloquent" for his passionate antislavery oratory. Chosen president by the House of Representatives after an inconclusive election against Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams often failed to mesh with the ethos of his era, pushing unsuccessfully for a strong, consolidated national government. Historian Robert V. Remini recounts how in the years before his presidency Adams was a shrewd, influential diplomat, and later, as a dynamic secretary of state under President James Monroe, he solidified many basic aspects of American foreign policy, including the Monroe Doctrine. Undoubtedly his greatest triumph was the negotiation of the Transcontinental Treaty, through which Spain acknowledged Florida to be part of the United States.