The text is written as if readers are already familiar with the major figures and events of the time. Adams repeatedly laments that his formal education, grounded in the classics, history, and literature, as was then the fashion, did not give him the scientific and mathematical knowledge needed to grasp the scientific breakthroughs of the 1890s and 1900s.Īdams had direct knowledge of many notable events and persons of the 1850-1900 period, and much of the text is devoted to giving his views on them. He correctly predicted that the 20th century would have even more explosive changes. Adams purchased an automobile as early as 1902, to make better use of a summer in France researching Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. The Education mentions the recent discovery of X-rays and radioactivity, and shows a familiarity with radio waves in his citation of Marconi and Branly. An important theme of The Education is its author's bewilderment and concern at the rapid advance in science and technology over the course of his lifetime, sometimes now called Second Industrial Revolution, but incarnated in his term " dynamo". Many aspects of the contemporary world emerged during the half-century between the Civil War and World War I, a half-century coinciding with Adams's adult life. The organizing thread of the book is how the "proper" schooling and other aspects of his youth was time wasted, thus, his search for self-education through experiences, friendships, and reading. Adams concluded that his traditional education failed to help him come to terms with these rapid changes, hence, his need for self-education. It is an extended meditation on the social, technological, political, and intellectual changes that occurred over Adams's lifetime. The Education is more a record of Adams's introspection and his observations than of his deeds. The Modern Library placed it first in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. Commercial publication of the book had to await its author's 1918 death, whereupon it won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. In 1907, Adams began privately circulating copies of a limited edition printed at his own expense. It is also a sharp critique of 19th-century educational theory and practice.
The Education of Henry Adams is an autobiography that records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838–1918), in his later years, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography
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