I once heard a quote attributed to Henry Adams that endeared me to him, something like: "philosophers are people hired by the rich to tell them everything is alright."

But now I can't find a trace of it online.

I wouldn't say that desctibes political philosophers like Karl Marx very well.

To be fair,

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

Is inscribed on his grave!

I tried to read this book once because it's ranked #1 on Modern Library's TOp 100 Non-fiction books of all time: http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-nonfiction/

I got 2/3rds of the way through and couldn't make it any farther; I was not enjoying it at all. And it's rare for me to not finish a book. It simply hasn't aged well, and his weird tone and unusual focus on "education" (broadly construed) rather than simply just writing a memoir was off-putting.

Also, this site is broken. The text is quite small, but zooming in the page nukes the left margin, pushing the text right up against the left edge of the window and making it hard to read.

> Adams feels very dead, very white, and very male

How about "very privileged", rather than use race as a proxy/synonym for the same?

Author talks of "contemporary attitudes towards privilege and entitlement", but I wonder if they mean contemporary left attitudes?

The 13-part 1976 PBS series "The Adams Chronicles" has an episode on Henry Adams, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adams_Chronicles. The four episodes on John Quincy Adams are fantastic, lead by the actor who played John Adams in the "1776" play/movie.

Sent this to my father. A long booster of Adams' works, this'll delight him.