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WORK TITLE: Agony and Eloquence
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PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://danielmallock.com/
CITY: Nashville
STATE: TN
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NATIONALITY:
http://danielmallock.com/author * https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/book-review-agony-and-eloquence-is-a-lively-history-of-the-deep-but-fractious-friendship-between-two-us-presidents-1.194457
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2015070295
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2015070295
HEADING: Mallock, Daniel L.
000 00392nz a2200109n 450
001 10027747
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008 151203n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2015070295
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC
100 1_ |a Mallock, Daniel L.
670 __ |a Agony and eloquence, 2016: |b ECIP t.p. (Daniel L. Mallock) data view (attended Ripon College and Brandeis University; lives in Nashville, Tennessee)
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Attended Ripon College and University of Waltham.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Daniel L. Mallock is a writer based in Nashville, Tennessee. He developed an interest in the history of the United States while growing up in Quincy, MA. John Quincy Adams, John Adams, and John Hancock were all born there, and the Quincy Historical Society provided Mallock with information about their significance in American history. Mallock went on to study history in college. While working in the corporate world, he performed historical research on his own.
In 2016, Mallock released his first book, Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution. In this volume, he tells of the friendship between two of the founding fathers, Adams and Jefferson. The two had been friends for some time when George Washington, the first President of the United States, retired. The political tension that ensued around the time of Washington’s departure found Jefferson and Adams on opposing sides. Adams ran for president and won. He was inaugurated in 1796. Despite their political differences, Adams named Jefferson his Vice President. Conflicts between Adams and Jefferson quickly emerged over how to respond to the French Revolution. Jefferson also opposed some of the laws passed during Adams’s administration. When Jefferson came to power, Adams was similarly perturbed by acts that he passed. After Adams returned to Quincy, he and Jefferson did not speak for many years. However, they finally reconciled at the end of their lives.
Reviews of Agony and Eloquence were favorable. John Taylor, critic in MBR Bookwatch, commented: “These key figures in the emerging American Republic are vividly brought to life by Mallock’s insightful analysis and clear and lively writing.” Taylor also described the volume as “exhaustively researched, impressively well written, exceptionally ‘reader friendly’.” “Agony and Eloquence is a lively history of the deep but fractious friendship between two U.S. presidents,” asserted Steve Donoghue, writer on the Abu Dhabi National website. Donoghue added: “Mallock tells the story of that friendship with a great deal of energy and only a very occasional inclination toward banality (lines like ‘Every generation writes its own histories, often reaching different conclusions from those who came before’ are mercifully few). He quite rightly views it as in some ways a personification of America’s formative early years and as ‘a model of learning, acceptance, and forgiveness’. And with effective understatement, he tells the familiar story of that friendship’s end in 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic’s founding.” Donoghue continued: “The moment is a perfect capstone to a vigorously symmetrical relationship, and Mallock has given that relationship a lively new history.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
MBR Bookwatch, December, 2016, John Taylor, review of Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution.
ONLINE
Abu Dhabi National Online, https://www.thenational.ae/ (February 10, 2016), Steve Donoghue, review of Agony and Eloquence.
Daniel L. Mallock Website, http://danielmallock.com/ (November 15, 2017).
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Daniel Mallock grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts within walking distance of the birthplaces of John Hancock, John Adams, and John Quincy Adams. He spent many afternoons riding his bicycle to John and Abigail’s home, Peace field. There is a stone wall there, along Adams Street in front of the Old House where he’d go, too many times to count, just to sit and think. This was the beginning of his lifelong appreciation and study of Adams, Jefferson, and the founding generation, and of his love for American history in general.
Mallock’s interest in Adams and his great colleague/friend/rival Thomas Jefferson never diminished. At Quincy schools and through his early association with the Quincy Historical Society he learned and read as much as he could devour. Also embracing a deep interest in the Civil War he joined the Civil War Round Table of Greater Boston during his high school years. He continued his history studies at Ripon College in Wisconsin and Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
After a life of travels, and adventures in the corporate world, marriage and family, and advanced studies at the school of hard knocks and the equally challenging institute of reality, Mallock kept on with his study of history.
Confident of an important, pertinent, and fascinating story to tell and hopeful that readers will enjoy his prose and research, Mallock’s years of study of John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson – their extraordinary friendship and the revolutions that swirled around them – are now available for interested readers.
The author hopes that your experience with Agony and Eloquence is an enjoyable and meaningful one.
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QUOTED: "These key figures in the emerging American Republic are vividly brought to
life by Mallock's insightful analysis and clear and lively writing."
"exhaustively researched, impressively well written, exceptionally 'reader friendly'."
11/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Agony and Eloquence
John Taylor
MBR Bookwatch.
(Dec. 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Agony and Eloquence
Daniel L. Mallock
Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018
www.skyhorsepublishing.com
9781634505284, $27.99, HC, 472pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: "Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution" by Daniel L. Mallock
is the story of one of the greatest friendships in American history and the revolutionary times in which it was made,
ruined, and finally renewed.
In the wake of Washington's retirement, longtime friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to represent the
opposing political forces struggling to shape America's future. Adams's victory in the presidential election of 1796
brought Jefferson into his administration--but as an unlikely and deeply conflicted vice president. The bloody
Republican revolution in France finally brought their political differences to a bitter pitch. "Agony and Eloquence"
covers an enduringly popular and inherently fascinating period of American history including the impact of French
foreign policy and revolutionary developments upon the American revolution ranging from the fall of the Bastille, to
the fall of the Jacobins, to the rise of Napoleon--all of which form a disturbing and illuminating counterpoint to events,
controversies, individuals, and relationships in Philadelphia and Washington.
Many important and fascinating people appear in the pages of "Agony and Eloquence" including Thomas Paine,
Camille Desmoulins, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Tobias Lear, Talleyrand, Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just, Abigail Adams,
Lafayette, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Dr. Joseph Priestley, Samuel Adams, Philip Mazzei, John Marshall,
Alexander Hamilton, and Edward Coles. These key figures in the emerging American Republic are vividly brought to
life by Mallock's insightful analysis and clear and lively writing.
Critique: Exhaustively researched, impressively well written, exceptionally 'reader friendly' in organization and
presentation, definitively informed and informative, "Agony and Eloquence" is unreservedly recommended for
community and academic library American History collections. It should be noted for students and non-specialist
general readers with an interest in the subject that "Agony and Eloquence" is also available in a Kindle format
($15.39). Libraries should be aware that "Agony and Eloquence" has a complete and unabridged MP3 audio book
edition (Brilliance, 9781531876364, $9.99).
John Taylor
Reviewer
11/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Taylor, John. "Agony and Eloquence." MBR Bookwatch, Dec. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475325294&it=r&asid=d8d176da065c02efd2d0a40b9e2ce586.
Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475325294
QUOTED: "Agony and Eloquence is a lively history of the deep but fractious friendship between two US presidents."
"Mallock tells the story of that friendship with a great deal of energy and only a very occasional inclination toward banality (lines like “Every generation writes its own histories, often reaching different conclusions from those who came before” are mercifully few). He quite rightly views it as in some ways a personification of America’s formative early years and as “a model of learning, acceptance, and forgiveness”. And with effective understatement, he tells the familiar story of that friendship’s end in 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Republic’s founding."
"The moment is a perfect capstone to a vigorously symmetrical relationship, and Mallock has given that relationship a lively new history."
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Book review: Agony and Eloquence is a lively history of the deep but fractious friendship between two US presidents
For 50 years, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were at the heart of American political thought and action, and in the final 14 years of their lives, they exchanged a series of letters ranging over the whole of the vast ideological landscape they shared.
Steve Donoghue
Steve Donoghue
February 10, 2016
Updated: February 10, 2016 04:00 AM
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Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776, by artist J L G Ferris (1863-1930). From left, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson review a draft in Philadelphia. Universal History Archive / Getty Images
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776, by artist J L G Ferris (1863-1930). From left, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson review a draft in Philadelphia. Universal History Archive / Getty Images
Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution
Daniel L Mallock
Skyhorse Publishing
Dh116
Daniel Mallock takes for the subject of his debut work of history, Agony and Eloquence, the long, passionate and sometimes troubled friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the Boston lawyer and the Virginia planter who became two of the principal architects of the American Revolution.
For 50 years, the two were at the heart of American political thought and action, and in the final 14 years of their lives, as the nation they did so much to establish approached its half-century anniversary, they exchanged a series of letters ranging over the whole of the vast ideological landscape they shared. These letters represent one of what Mallock refers to as the “great services” Adams and Jefferson performed for their country, epitomising their belief that “friendship should be immune to political differences”.
That remarkable final correspondence – a literary treasure unsurpassed in American history and yet so much less well-known than, for instance, the Federalist Papers or the Lincoln-Douglas debates – was as refreshing for both men as it was unlikely, since it came after years of personal and political estrangement.
Both men were fiercely intelligent: Adams in a blunt, dogged, slightly pompous register; Jefferson, almost a decade his junior, in a more diffident but wiser register; and both were enthusiastic readers and writers. Their personalities were so at odds that in retrospect it seems improbable that they would ever have been friends at all, let alone the close friends they were for most of their lives.
Both had been ministers of the fledgling United States to the courts of Europe – Adams in London and Jefferson in Paris. Both had served in the country’s first presidential administration under George Washington – Adams as vice president, Jefferson as secretary of state. But that service Mallock mentions – that friendship should be immune to political differences – is a hard, uphill lesson to learn, and when Washington left office, the dampening effect of the reverence everybody felt for him was withdrawn. The country’s government fragmented into the political factions that have characterised it ever since.
Washington had hated infighting; even as a military commander, and certainly as president, he had sought always – sometimes irresponsibly – to avoid pointed discourse. But in any group of six Americans, you’ll have six different ideas of how the country should be run, and when Washington left office, those differences boiled to the surface.
Adams won the hotly-contested election in 1796, and Jefferson became his vice president. There’s a strong argument to be made that neither Adams nor Jefferson had a particularly suitable temperament to be president, although Mallock treads fairly lightly on the point. John Ferling, John Adams’s best modern biographer, quite accurately describes him as “dour, acerbic, and querulous,” and Jefferson had an even more complicated personality, one commonly misunderstood.
“A common view of Jefferson,” Mallock writes, “is that he was a deeply contradictory man – distant and aloof, according to some scholars – a determined political and personal manipulator, an emotionally-challenged man who withheld his deepest and most essential personal truths.”
In reality, as Mallock sees it, Jefferson was “an extraordinarily brilliant and multifaceted person whose better nature was sometimes subsumed by personal pride, emotional limitations, and by his deep affection for revolutionary political principles.” Ideologically, the two men were poles apart. Jefferson was an ardent admirer of revolution, a deep believer in the wisdom of the collective, full of optimism about human nature. He looked on the French Revolution, which was first exploding into existence while Jefferson was minister in Paris, as a triumph of the human spirit on par with the American Revolution, and his zeal could sometimes blind him.
“Perhaps Jefferson’s reaction would have been different had he remained in Paris and seen all of those horrors with his own eyes,” Mallock writes with unsettling perception. “Disturbingly, one gets the impression that he may well have kept on, regardless.”Alternately, Adams was deeply suspicious of majority rule, leery always of granting any kind of power to the uneducated, and as he observed decades later, he was never taken with the romance of the French Revolution.
“We differed in opinion about the French revolution,” he wrote to Benjamin Rush in late 1811. “He thought it wise and good, and that it would end in the establishment of a free republic. I saw through it, to the end of it, before it broke out, and was sure it could end only in a restoration of the Bourbons, or a military despotism, after deluging France and Europe in blood …” Adams complained that the French Revolution did great damage to his friendship with Jefferson.
These differences were only exacerbated by political infighting of their respective presidential administrations. The Alien and Sedition Acts imposed on the country by Adams, for instance, naturally grated against Jefferson’s non-autocratic sensibilities. And the Embargo Acts Jefferson enacted in his second term, which Adams considered “a cowardly measure”, very nearly drove New England to secede from the Union.
Each man engaged in more or less overt sniping, and the little political betrayals that are inevitable in the arena of government grew more and more acrimonious. Rather than attend Jefferson’s inauguration as a gesture of goodwill, Adams packed up his household and began the long carriage journey back to his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he lost very little time in taking up his pen to defend his administration and – by extension – criticise his successor. By the time Jefferson’s two terms in office were over, an icy silence had existed between the two men for years and seemed fated to continue unbroken.
As time passed and the great lions of the Revolutionary era died off, the friends and acquaintances of the two men increasingly sought to bring about a reconciliation. Foremost among these friends was gentle and brilliant Benjamin Rush, who worked subtly but persuasively to overcome the momentum of silence between Jefferson’s home of Monticello and the Adams farm at Peacefield.
In late 1811, Rush might have thought his labours close to fruition, only to receive a tart letter from Adams asking what possible use it could be for Jefferson and himself to exchange letters so late in life. “I have nothing to say to him, but to wish him an easy journey to heaven, when he goes, which I wish may be delayed, as long as life shall be agreeable to him,” Adams wrote. “And he can have nothing to say to me, but to bid me make haste and be ready.”
Undaunted, Rush persisted, and when the correspondence actually began and Adams quickly realised how much he’d missed Jefferson, he sent a very different letter to Rush, one that virtually capered with glee, shouting “Huzza!” and going on: “You have wrought wonders! You have made Peace between Powers that never were at War! You have reconciled Friends that never were at enmity!” The two exchanged 158 letters over the next 14 years, with Adams writing twice as often and, tellingly, almost never complaining about the discrepancy. He happily maintained that although he wrote more, Jefferson wrote deeper. In these letters, all the emotional and intellectual storms that had blown between the two men dissipated, and in their place, a challenging and very sweet epistolary portrait of two old friends delighting in each other’s company.
Mallock tells the story of that friendship with a great deal of energy and only a very occasional inclination toward banality (lines like “Every generation writes its own histories, often reaching different conclusions from those who came before” are mercifully few). He quite rightly views it as in some ways a personification of America’s formative early years and as “a model of learning, acceptance, and forgiveness”. And with effective understatement, he tells the familiar story of that friendship’s end in 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Republic’s founding.
On his deathbed, Adams, mentally surveying the ranks of the Founding Fathers, is consoled at least that “Thomas Jefferson survives” – not knowing that Jefferson had died just a few hours earlier that same day. The moment is a perfect capstone to a vigorously symmetrical relationship, and Mallock has given that relationship a lively new history.
Steve Donoghue is managing editor of Open Letters Monthly and a regular contributor to The Review.
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