Charles N. Edel’s new book Nation Builder misreads the historical significance of America’s sixth president.
Charles N. Edel, Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 432 pp., $29.95.
THINK OF John Quincy Adams as the Elvis of American statecraft: creative genius, preeminent practitioner and enduring inspiration. Well, make that Elvis minus the charisma.
So Charles Edel argues in Nation Builder. Edel, who teaches at the U.S. Naval War College, believes that Adams personally devised the “comprehensive grand strategy” that guided the United States for decades and “set the nation on a course to long-term security, stability, and prosperity.” The “detailed policy road map” that Adams developed sought “to harness the country’s geographic, military, economic, and moral resources,” with the ultimate aim of bringing “America to a position of preeminence in the world.”
