Henry Adams occupies a special place in the pantheon of American historians.  He not only wrote about politics and history, he spent his life moving around in those worlds.  The great-grandson of John Adams and the grandson of John Quincy Adams, he enjoyed special access to the moving and shaking of American politics his entire life.  The insight from this access afforded him a unique position to comment on the nation's history.

Democracy was not Adams' only attempt at fiction, but it's his most well-known attempt.  To be honest, it's not that great of a read, especially if you're unfamiliar with his other works.  Non-fiction was his vocation, for sure, but this stab at fiction does give a reader another window into his thinking about where the nation was at the end of the nineteenth century and where it was headed in the twentieth.

American history fans will enjoy it for what it is, but don't wait for the film.