John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty by C. Bradley Thompson

By Jon Hersey

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.

340 pp. $26.95 (paperback).

In late 1786, while in London serving as America’s ambassador to Great Britain, John Adams heard troubling news from both sides of the Atlantic. In France, thinkers such as Turgot, La Rochefoucauld, and Condorcet seemed likely to establish a unicameral legislature—without checks and b…