The Education of Henry Adams (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

The Education of Henry Adams, written by America’s greatest historian and heir to America’s first political family, was greeted on its posthumous release as the finest of American autobiographies. For a century it has been routinely characterized as one of world literature’s extraordinary life narratives. However, The Education isn’t truly a work of autobiography. It is a meditation on a life formed by a family tradition that wraps itself around a cultural critique of the age, and around speculations on a philosophy of history.