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Historians such as Drew McCoy and Joseph Ellis have produced noteworthy studies of the Founders and their impact on the time period of the American Revolution. Fowler's supplement to this blossoming literature is in many ways a traditional biography. It investigates Samuel Adams's life as it unfolded and pays less attention to the larger conceptual issues that commanded the age. No reader can escape this brief biography without a sense of the personal loss that Samuel Adams felt when he witnessed the death of many of his children and his wife. “Delivering five children, three deaths among them took a heavy toll on Elizabeth…Elizabeth died on 25 July.” (37) Nor will an attentive reader assume that political events unfolded according to some foreseen path. Fowler's achievement here is to bring the reader into the loll of Boston politics, the arena of much of Adams's life. His representation of Adams's Harvard, his outline of the careers and reputations of other notable figures - such as John Hancock and John Adams - and his depiction of Adams's disenchantment with the rise of the Federalists in the 1790s - which included the election in 1796 of his cousin, John, to the Preside
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Biographies should always be a little unconventional and a little untraditional in approach. The title of the book says its subject was a puritan. He should have explored the religious beliefs of Samuel Adams persistently in order to prove that he actually was a puritan, if in fact he was. Mancall, “Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan,” Historian, v. The political scenes, and all the conflicts and rifts that arose have been carefully written with a depth that can not be ignored. Most of us are familiar with Samuel Adams as a politician and a revolutionary but very few of us know him as a person. But it would have been better had he mentioned him as a forceful writer too, which Samuel Adams most certainly was. Mancall, “Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan,” Historian, v. Mancall, “Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan,” Historian, v. It would have made sense if the author had done some more research in this area too. There are few instances where you can get a glimpse of the man himself. What makes a biography interesting to read is that little extra that the author has tried to explore. Fowler, with his knowledge and expertise, should have tried to explore the man a little deeper and should have tried to bring forth some aspect of his personality, which is not known, to the general public.
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