John Adams was a man driven by ambition, although he often denied the charge. In Adams’ later years, he grew increasingly embittered by the public’s exaltation of America’s more charismatic founders: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. All were lavishly praised with orations and marble monuments, yet , Adams felt his own contributions to American independence—including his call for revolution in the Continental Congress and pivotal diplomatic...

John Adams wasn’t born silver spoon in hand, and at the end of his life he was buried in a modest, granite tomb. In between, however, the Atlas of Independence was a man of tremendous good fortune. As we shall see, in lineage, love, and learning, John Adams’s luck was peerless.