Book summary

Published posthumously in 1918, this book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. In this autobiography, Adams confronts the way he was raised, asserting that he and other men of his generation were singularly unprepared for the chaos unleashed upon civilization by the economic and technical innovations as the end of the 19th century drew near. More than any other work of Adams's, his "Education" has made his reputation as a probing intellect striving to make sense of the world around him.

Media reviews

"...[W]herein lies the greatness of the book? It lies, I submit, in the extraordinarily vivid sense conveyed to the reader of history being formed under his eyes, in the crystallization of the twentieth century out of the simple substance of the eighteenth. I know of no other autobiography (as I shall impenitently insist on calling it) which conveys anything like the same effect."