The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America's Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian

by Nina Burleigh

In her illuminating and dramatic biography The Stranger and the Statesman , Nina Burleigh reveals a little-known slice of social and intellectual history in the life and times of the man responsible for the creation of the United States' principal cultural institution, the Smithsonian. It was one of the nineteenth century's greatest philanthropic gifts -- and one of its most puzzling mysteries. In 1829, a wealthy English naturalist named James Smithson left his library, mineral collection, and entire fortune to the "United States of America, to found ... an establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men" -- even though he had never visited the United States or known any Americans. In this fascinating book, Burleigh pieces together the reclusive benefactor's life, beginning with his origins in the splendidly dissipated eighteenth-century aristocracy as the Paris-born bastard son of the first Duke of Northumberland and a wild adventuress who preserved for her son a fortune through gall and determination. The book follows Smithson through his university years and his passionate study of minerals across the European continent during the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Detailed are his imprisonment -- simply for being an Englishman in the wrong place, his experiences in the gambling dens of France, and his lonely and painstaking scientific pursuits. After Smithson's death, nineteenth-century American politicians were given the task of securing his half-million dollars -- the equivalent today of fifty million -- and then trying to determine how to increase and diffuse knowledge from the muddy, brawling new city of Washington. Burleigh discloses how Smithson's bequest was nearly lost due to fierce battles among many clashing Americans -- Southern slavers, state's rights advocates, nation-builders, corrupt frontiersmen, and Anglophobes who argued over whether a gift from an Englishman should even be accepted. She also reveals the efforts of the unsung heroes, mainly former president John Quincy Adams, whose tireless efforts finally saw Smithson's curious notion realized in 1846, with a castle housing the United States' first and greatest cultural and scientific establishment.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, Science

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Nina is an award-winning author and journalist and documentary producer with wide-ranging interests including politics, history, conservation, exploration and science. She has written seven books and has been published in the New Yorker, Time, New York and People, among many other journals and rags. She publishes a national political substack called American Freakshow. She has occasionally shellacked her hair for television, including Good Morning America, Nightline, and various programs on CNN and C-Span, as well as flogged books on NPR and countless radio outlets.

The daughter of author and artist Robert Burleigh and Berta Burleigh, a teacher who emigrated to the USA from Iraq in the 1950s, Nina was born and educated in the Midwest, has traveled extensively in the Middle East and lived in Italy and France. She covered the Clinton White House for Time and reported and wrote human interest stories at People Magazine from New York. She is an adjunct professor at New York University and has lectured in Norway, Mexico, Italy and around the US..

Her first novel, Zero Visibility Possible, will be published in 2024, the first in a trilogy of dark satires about characters grappling with aspects of climate change, conspiracy theories and disinformation.

Her nonfiction books include The Trump Women: Part of the Deal, a lively study of the women in Trump's world; Unholy Business, a true tale of how modern science is being used to support the curious world of biblical relic trade and forgery; her book about Napoleon's scientists in Egypt, Mirage, was selected by the New York Times as an editors' choice and won the Society of Women Educators' Award in 2008.

Reviews

[Clif Hostetler]

I was motivated to read this book because I wanted to know why James Smithson (1765–1829), a wealthy British subject, decided to bequeath his fortune to the United States "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men." I learned that historians have been scouring the records for nearly two hundred years trying to answer that question, and conjecture is the best anyone can do.

The first half of the book is about the "stranger" of the book's title, James Smithson. Referencing him as stranger makes sense because he had no known connection to America prior to his bequest. The second half of the book covers the political haggling in the USA that ensued over how to interpret Smithson's mandate in his will "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." The "statesman" part of the book's title is referring to John Quincy Adams who led the political coalition in Congress which saved the money for the purpose it was intended. The second half of the book also describes the early years of the Smithsonian Institute.

This book covers James Smithson's life as best it can, but there's not enough information about him to fill up half a book. Thus much attention is given to the source of his inherited wealth, his contemporaries with whom he interacted, and the nature of the life and times in the sixteenth century world. He was a bastard son of an English aristocrat and a wealthy unmarried widow. It is speculated that the illegitimacy of his birth was a factor in his wish for his wealth to not remain in England.

He spend most of his adult life in continental Europe collecting and analyzing mineral specimens as a gentleman scientist. He actually spoke French as a child before learning English. He was also fluent in Italian. He died in Genoa 1829 and bequeathed his estate to his nephew with the stipulation that if his nephew died without issue that the estate then go to America for the creation of an institute using the name Smithsonian. His nephew died childless in 1835.

The fact that he specifically asked that the institution be named Smithsonian is in my opinion the best evidence that he wanted his name and legacy to be remembered by future generations. It wouldn't have taken much speculation to conclude that his wishes to be remembered were more likely in the young nation of the United States of America where his wealth would make a significant impact. His estate value was approximately $500,000 at the time, which is equivalent to $14,000,000 in 2022. According to some sources, when considering the GDP at the time it may be more comparable to $220 million in the year 2007.

Ironically, the name that his bequest has preserved for history was not his name at birth. He spent most of his life using his mother's last name of Macie, and didn't change to Smithson—his biological father's name—until after the death of both his father and mother.

[Kate]

Interesting historical account about the man behind the Smithsonian and the world he lived in. Interesting, that is, without reading like a textbook.

Based on the reviews on the back, I was really hoping for a more gripping tale though. I would still read it again regardless of this, but I feel that was slightly misleading as some of the writing can really get tedious and meanders as the author skims the bottom of the well for "facts" about a man we know so very little about. It is more an account of assumptions about what his life may have been like and why he chose to donate the money rather than providing any substantial new findings.

The title/cover is also misleading because the book hardly deals with John Adams at all. He makes a brief appearance at the end. While this is fine and dandy and is fine reading, I just wish it was represented accurately in the way the book is being marketed.

The author comes from a backgroud in journalism and I found her choppy sentences and bird-walking-esque reporting style of writing to be distracting at times.

I'm being pretty hard on it though because it was worth the read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the formation of the United States, The Smithsonian Institution, James Smithson, Early American Presidents and the Congress/Senate, as well as British and American relations in those early formative years.

[Jason Browning]

This book provides an interesting look at not only the creation of the Smithsonian Institution, but also about the culture and history of 18th and 19th century England. Unfortunately, this is also where the book meanders and becomes repetitious. While the information provided is both interesting and relevant, the author has a tendency to repeat a thesis multiple times within the span of several paragraphs. (For example, we are told on numerous occasions that Mr. Smithson was renowned for his attention to detail in the laboratory, or entreated to a multiple paragraph description of what might have been on the dinner menu on a given night.)

Overall, the thesis is solid, and the subject matter is very interesting. There is that always ill-desired feeling, however, that the author is grasping at material in order to make the book of sufficient length. The coverage of the actual creation of the Institution and its early history is also left a bit wanting, as much time has been devoted to the early years of Mr. Smithson's life.

[Mike]

A well written book with a great deal of fascinating information I did not know, but not very focused. The title is very misleading as the book is essentially a life and times biography of James Smithson until the last couple of chapters. John Quincy Adams is a very minor side character at best and isn't even mentioned until the final quarter of the book. With that said, I did enjoy much of the book, especially chapters about 19th century English society and science.

[James Lee]

The Stranger and the Statesman by Nina Burleigh provides some fascinating glimpses into everyday life in late 18th and early 19th century Britain, and offers insight into American politics in the Age of Jackson. As for the title, though, there wasn’t much about the Stranger, John Smithson, and even less about the Statesman, John Quincy Adams.
The subtitle is a mouthful: John Smithson, John Quincy Adams and the Making of America’s Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian. Any book title that requires two colons needs to be reworked.
Smithson was the obscure British scientist who willed his fortune to the United States government to create an “establishment for the increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men.” That ”establishment” bears his name and is one of the world’s foremost museums and scientific organizations. Millions of visitors to Washington, D.C have Smithson to thank, not only for providing the money to create the Smithsonian, but to allow it to operate free of charge.
We don’t know why Smithson’s will read as it did; some, including Adams, thought he might have been insane. But Burleigh faces a big problem: Smithson’s life is as much an enigma as was his will. Burleigh’s research uncovers only the barest outlines of a biography. Smithson was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, one of the richest men in Britain at the time, but never acknowledged by the Duke. In the late 18th century it was not at all unusual for the aristocracy to recognize and even embrace children born outside of the marriage, even to the point of raising illegitimate children alongside the properly born. While the Duke dutifully supported his two illegitimate daughters, he ignored his illegitimate son. Smithson’s mother, luckily, was wealthy in her on right and was able to provide him with an upbringing consistent with the wealthy of that time. I won’t say it was warm (corporal punishment was considered a character builder at the time), but it did allow him to eventually go to Oxford where he did well in chemistry. After graduation, Smithson set out to be a full-time mineralogist, which, along with gambling, became his lifelong passion.
With his mother’s money, Smithson roamed Europe, collecting mineralogical samples, conducting experiments, conversing with the great scientific minds of the age, and playing cards. In truth, he was a scientist of minor significance and quite forgettable.
Smithson never married and had only one heir, his late brother’s illegitimate son. Smithson willed his estate to the nephew, with the stipulation that if the nephew should die before him, the money would go to the United States – which is precisely what happened.
After Smithson’s demise, the scene moves to British Chancery Court and eventually to the United States Congress. His nephew’s family sued for a significant portion of the inheritance, and the United States government had to present its case to a skeptical British court. Moreover, after the election of Andrew Jackson, there was much feeling in the United States against accepting the money, approximately $500,000, because it was foreign and because it would give the federal government a role in distributing those funds that made states rightist in the South and West uneasy. Part of the problem was that Smithson’s directive was so vague. Did it mean found a museum? Provide for research? Create a library? This is where Adams comes in, as a leader in the House of Representatives. Adams yearned to create national academic institutions that could compete with those in Europe. He saw Smithson’s legacy as a means of creating this vision. He fought an exhausting battle over many years to get the government to accept and then dispense the money, and eventually to create the institution we have all come to know. Adams’ role in this book rests primarily in the battles waged in the House against those wanting to either reject the money, or to do something different with it. While Adams’ influence was of monumental importance in the eventual creation of the Smithsonian Institution, his appearance in The Stranger and The Statesman is minor.
Despite Smithson’s life as a scientist and illegitimate son of a fantastically wealthy man, so little documentation exists about him that it is not possible to fill the pages of a book. That is why Burleigh goes off on tangents describing the harrowing child rearing practices of the aristocracy, and the political fights in Congressional committees. This would have worked better as a long magazine piece, relying on far less padding.

[K]

This is a pretty good book, though I wonder about a few of the author's decisions on what to focus on. I'm guessing that she's limited by the available information and had to pad the text. To cite the most obvious examples, of the two men listed in the book's title, one barely makes an appearance in the first half (James Smithson), and the other (John Quincy Adams) is totally absent until the final quarter. I'm sure the author didn't write the title of the book, but she must be somewhat distressed that it's deeply misleading.

So what do I like about the book? Pretty much everything else. The book begins with a bizarre anecdote about Alexander Graham Bell going to Genoa to grab the remains of James Smithson from a British gravesite in Italy. The story carries so many of the themes in this book and of the world of the 18th and 19th and even early 20th centuries -- Britain's giant scope across the world, the reverence for "great men" and their doings, Italy's fractured governance, growing role of media, and bureaucratic bungling.

The book tells several tales, which sort of intersect or lead from one to another. In sum, she encapsulates the oddity of the situation. James Smithson, who never visited the United States, willed his entire fortune to his illegitimate half-nephew, but put a late codicil in his will that if that man died without heirs, all the money would go to the US for an institute "for the diffusion of knowledge," to be built in Washington, DC. Nobody knows why he did this, and almost nothing of his private life is known at all.

This book doesn't break new ground in finding out more about Smithson, but it neatly packages what is known and speculates in interesting ways on why he did what he did. The first thread is 50 years of British history before Smithson was born (that wasn't his baptized name -- more on that later). Tales of the grandparents and parents of James Smithson cover the tale of how great wealth was being created in major European countries for a limited number of people and the excesses of that wealth.

Smithson was the illegitimate child of a duke, who also was one of the wealthiest men of his era, Hugh Smithson. Illegitimate children were common in the England of the late 18th century, and James Smithson was formally acknowledged as the son of Hugh Smithson during James's lifetime, and even somewhat during Hugh's. Smithson had other illegitimate children as well. This wasn't unusual at the time; the book has too much about this topic, but it's interesting. However, the details of how Hugh Smithson became a duke resulted in James Smithson being denied any of the privileges of nobility, and this probably frustrated him for the rest of his life, as he started referencing himself as part of the noble class even though the class didn't agree. That gap between what he was and what he thought he should be is probably what led him to give his money to the US, as a way to ensure it didn't wind up in the hands of the British government or the nobility.

The second major theme running alongside high culture is that these same wealthy men were the leaders of an extraordinary period of scientific inquiry. They changed the world. Often the same people who were rapaciously keeping the profits generated by their tenants living in thatched huts were working with delicate hand-made scientific instruments and trying to divine the world's secrets. The author makes the the point that the wealth these men (only men) held was essential to their ability to get the resources and time to investigate these discoveries.

The third line of discussion is James and his mother. James was born in France, as his mother left England while pregnant, and was raised by governesses and then lived with his mother from about age 5. She was widowed before James was born to a wealthy man who died young, then married a second time to a violent man who tried to intimidate her into giving him her money. But she held steadfast, and that guy also died, fortunately before he killed her in one of his rages. From there, she protected and grew her estate, which supported James for the rest of his life. And that estate was what he willed to the US. So her story is fascinating as well, and the author makes the point that she had unusual independence for a woman in England at the time, given that she had wealth of her own and wasn't under control of a man.

So, born in France as Jacques Macie, James was raised by a sophisticated, well-traveled mother. He was smart (went to Oxford) and wealthy enough to be comfortable, while probably frustrated that he was on the periphery of truly great wealth (his mom lived almost next door to Hugh Smithson's estate after her 2nd husband died, and the assumption is they were sleeping together again). He became a minor, but respected, researcher into minerals, and a key member of England's burgeoning science community. But in his late 20s, he left England and spent most of his life (died at 64) in Europe. He trekked around Europe to find minerals, and then took them back to his home laboratory to study them, sharing findings and samples with other scientists. He was particularly known for meticulous measurements of the base materials in a mineral and his ability to weigh their proportions. This helped others understand characteristics of minerals and even atomic structure, to some degree, and his work was appreciated.

Oh, and by the way, he was in Paris during the French Revolution and barely escaped with his life. The French and British were at war at the time, and he didn't leave France, perhaps because he thought of himself as part of a non-political fraternity of scientists, and partly because he genuinely felt at the time that nobility had questionable value. His British and French scientist friends convinced the authorities to let him out of house arrest after a year in which he genuinely thought he would be killed.

Anyway, there's a lot of weird things happening in his life, and it's remarkable that someone could lead such a peripatetic existence at a time when travel was so difficult. I wish that more was known about him, but alas, all of his personal records were lost in a Smithsonian fire.

And that brings me to the last part of the book. The last third or so is about how the US reacted to learning from British authorities about the bequest. It was in the form of bonds with a face value of about 100,000 pounds. Important that they were bonds because as an illegitimate person, Smithson could not will property to anyone. He smartly had converted his property to bonds and cash about 10 years before he died (he inherited money savvy from his mom and his dad). The book details how this bizarre bequest confused Congress. It was huge -- the size of Harvard's endowment at the time -- and it had almost no restrictions. The guy was unheard of. It was coming from a country that only 20-25 years before had burned the Capitol in the war of 1812, and to which the US still felt far inferior. And it seemed to imply that the US should set up a national institution (library, university, museum, research facility?), but Southerners were wary of any national government structure because it could potentially result in national control over the states -- ie., undermine their ability to enforce slavery.

The author ties these threads together well, though a bit too briefly for my taste. It's sort of the point of the book, or should be. How did the US get the money out of England -- there's a brief description of what Richard Rush went through to get the money out of chancery court, but I would have liked more. And there's a nice summary of the ways that Southern politicians sought to reject the gift because they saw it as creeping federalism -- again, more would have been good. And the same for the role that John Quincy Adams (remember him from the book's title?) led the fight to make sure the gift was accepted, the money protected, and an institution ultimately founded. Way more on all this stuff should have been presented, though I am guessing that the author downplayed these parts because it's been the subject of other books. She chose to go with the more obscure element, Smithson himself.

In sum, this is an entertaining book that opens windows into a number of intersecting cultural factors and the busy, fascinating lives of people of wealth and privilege -- and how this yielded an institution that has helped elevate our knowledge ever since.

[Joyce]

The author picked a perhaps insuperable challenge here -- how to make sense of the gift from a British lordling (in his own mind) that led to the creation of the Smithsonian -- given that we know almost nothing about the man. In the absence of documentary evidence for his motivations -- Smithson seems to have been a person with very little nuclear family, no close friendships, nothing we would consider a job, only impersonal and fragmentary writings, and a last will and testament which might have been more of a "fuck you" than an actual bequest -- his life becomes a weird negative-space that exists merely to illustrate the effects of the great historical shifts of the era: the sexual licentiousness of the Regency, the ability of women (at least of wealthy widows) to bring lawsuits on their own behalf, the precise moment in which wealth became divorced from land ownership, the enthusiasm for science and the early French Revolution, etc.. That is all well and good, and a very quick entertaining read, if you already know a lot about the relevant history; I imagine it could be quite tedious if you don't.

The real problem here isn't with the "stranger" part of the book, it's with the "statesman" part. Where Smithson stands in for all manner of historical movements, John Quincy Adams is reduced to an old man with a strange late-blooming obsession with astronomy. Obviously much better historians have limned the relationship between (anti-)intellectualism and public life in the US, but Burleigh barely touches upon it here during a truly critical moment of the eternal struggle. I personally think it's unfair to Quincy Adams to cut him off from the whole history of Americans fighting for science against the mob, particularly since this author spends so much time delighting in the most jejune details of pedigree and estate of the British aristocracy.

I rather enjoy reading popular historical accounts that don't end at a strong conclusion, but I think maybe I'm in the minority here. If you're going to try this book you should be able to enjoy the journey without stressing about the destination.

[David Kent]

A wonderfully written book that gives an incredible amount of information on James Smithson, the Englishman whose bequest to a country he never visited created the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithson was actually born in Paris and named Jacques Louis Macie. This was traditional for illegitimate children of British peers. Denied his father's name and assets, Smithson would take hold his mother's name until her death, at which time she insisted he reclaim the Smithson name. Ironically, his father, Sir Hugh Smithson, the First Duke of Northumberland had taken his wife's name of Percy, which at the time was more prestigious. Teasing through all these name changes and the complications of rampant illegitimacy and primogeniture makes the story Burleigh tells all the more amazing.

And it's quite a story. Burleigh traces Smithson's (aka, Macie's) early life in Paris and London, and his later life in other European venues as he pursues a career as a gentleman scientist in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Smithson specializes in mineralogy when that science was in a time when the study of minerals played its most important role in the debate between the neptunists (pro-flood believers) and plutonists (constant changes in the earth caused by vulcanism). He published 29 scientific papers in his lifetime.

His death in 1829 began two decades of struggle as the United States debated whether to even accept his bequest, and then what to do with it. Burleigh gives us an excellent view of that struggle, including the championship of former President and now Congressman John Quincy Adams and others. Eventually the Smithsonian Institution is created and the iconic red sandstone Castle begins to arise on what is now the National Mall but was then largely a pestilent swamp.

To this day no one completely understands why the English/French Smithson stipulated his money should be used to create a scientific institution in the United States, but Burleigh does an admirable job providing an informative and entertaining examination of what we do know.

[Frank Stein]

A solid journalistic-style account of the formation of the Smithsonian.

The author writes with clarity and energy about the bizarre world surrounding the bookish and reclusive James Smithson, and the series of events that led to his bequest to the US of 100,000 pounds for an institution for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge." The mores of the British upper classes of his time (the constant adultery and flight to Europe to birth bastards, the jaw-dropping debts and luxuries, the casual abuse of the poor) are depicted perfectly, as well as Smithson's apparent remove from all of them, save compulsive gambling. He was too focused on mineralogy.

Even more interesting though is her account of the legal and political battles over Smithson's bequest. Some, like John C. Calhoun, resolutely thwarted the government's attempt to accept it because he believed it would demonstrate an unconsitutional extension of federal power. Others, like John Quincy Adams, made the Smithsonian their grail quest. Adams said that the 10 year quest to put the money into a center for learning (he was obsessed with creating an observatory) inspired him more than any other subject.

The book covers almost 150 years of history with ease, but I'm sure the author would agree that it leaves the greatest question unanswered. Thanks to a fire at the Smithsonian in 1865 that consumed Smithson's papers, and despite over 100 years of research into the man's past, we have no idea why he left all his money to a country he had never visited and for which he seemed to have no particular sympathy.

[melydia]

Let's get this out of the way first: they still don't have any idea what prompted James Smithson to leave money in his will to found the Smithsonian Institution in America, a country he'd never visited. So don't come to this expecting any answers on that front. But it's still a decent introduction to the 18th century scientific community in Europe, and the story of the actual founding of the Smithsonian (once people stopped bickering over what to do with the money) is quite good. It stops after that, though - no word on the opening of additional museums or the Zoo. Smithson is the primary subject here. Not one I'll read again, and I probably would have passed had I known just how illuminating it wasn't going to be, but I still liked the little nuggets of information I did glean about one of the most amazing museum systems in the world. So there's that.

[Julia]

Extraordinarily enjoyable. A good read on the day-to-day life of, as well as the intricate social and legal morays impacting, an English bastard of high birth. Fascinating discussions on the small community of individuals involved in the fields of science and discovery throughout Europe in the late 1700s - mid 1800s. The tie-in to early America and the political forces relevant to the creation of the Smithsonian are such an interesting story! So well-written; I am now interested in reading other books by Nina Burleigh.

[Marilyn]

When asked to report on James Smithson to the institution founded with Smithson's bequest, an investigator apologized for finding little new and pertinent information: "After all, it is not so very surprising that little can be ascertained respecting an English gentleman of retired habits who live abroad many years and died in 1829, more than half a century ago." Exactly. That was in 1880. Now, a hundred and forty years later, Nina Burleigh could have made the same conclusion. To make an entire book out of the scant actual information, the author resorted to lengthy sections on the social habits of the generation of Smithson's parents, including laws of inheritance, acceptability of extramarital liaisons, and much more. Interesting context, but it took many pages for readers to get to Smithson himself. And then there's so much conjecture. "He likely would have seen. . . . " "Perhaps they knew about . . . ." That sort of thing. Guesses. So much for Smithson. As for the "statesman," John Quincy Adams -- his position in the book seems more of an afterthought. If all this sounds like a dismissal of the book, it's not. The book is interesting -- just not what I expected.

[Jenny Anderson]

Rating: 2.5
I set out wanting and expecting to enjoy this story as I quite love popular history. Although I didn't dislike the book - in fact I learned much and enjoyed the storylike narrative - I eventually found myself disconnected from the pages for two main reasons.
1. Since much is unknown about Smithson, the author instructs us instead on his relatives, his acquaintances, and his lifetime, what he would have experienced, witnessed, and lived among. At first, I enjoyed this synechdoche-style tactic; however after a while, it all felt like so much conjecture and quite empty.
2. Too many parts felt repetitive. It was as if certain sections and chapters were written in isolation as stand alones and not cross-referenced with each other once joined. Although this can sometimes be helpful to jog the memory when there are too many names, dates, or storyline to keep straight, on this book it was annoying.
Still, I learned quite a bit and enjoyed doing so.

[MaryEllen Clark]

This is the strangest, wackiest tale of the Englishman who funded the Smithsonian. From his strange life story, and inexplicably leaving $500,000 to the United States to create an institution bearing his name for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge" to a country he had never visited! They send Richard Russ to England to bring back the money by ship in gold in 120 crates and he deposits in the US Mint at Philadelphia. Then John Quincy Adams gets involved to wrangle back that money that Congress under Andrew Jackson's presidency had invested in Arkansas. The poor man died in Genoa Italy and his nephew buries him there, but the US sends Alexander Graham Bell and his wife to Italy to exhume his remains and bring them to the US. I kid you not. You have to read this story to believe it! Who knew!

[Socraticgadfly]

It's decent as far as it goes, but it goes either too far or too little.

Since we just don't know that much about Smithson, you can't do a book-length bio about him. But, if you're going to try, you

If you're going to talk about the political backdrop to receiving his money, you should expand that.

If you're going to talk about "the making of America's greatest museum," you should expand that, ie, the work of Joseph Henry.

Add in some stilted language in early pages, and some overblown claims for / about Lavosier; namely, the untrue claim that he created a chemical table of the elements that is the basis for the one used today. Even John Dalton didn't do that; it's Mendeleev that created the first version of a periodic table.

Three stars or a "gentleman's C" for the book.

[Amy]

This was my second book about the history of the Smithsonian (the first was "The Lost World of James Smithson"). Although it is an interesting history to me because I work there, it makes for a pretty unsatisfying read given that so little is actually known about James Smithson, his life, or his intentions. With both books I've read on this subject, it feels like the author is grabbing at straws, the same straws that have been grabbed at again and again. My biggest take-away from this book was the role that John Quincy Adams played in the founding of the Institution. A biography of his life is getting added to me "to read" list.

[John]

An interesting bit of history covering the life of the benefactor of the Smithsonian. The author had little to work with given the limited records at hand. In that respect it reminded me a bit of the biography of Herbert Hoover who left precious little in the way of personal history. In any case, the author does a good job of describing both the man and his times, including being trapped in wartime. I also just finished a book about Martha Jefferson and found it interesting to compare the scientific pursuits of gentleman scientist Thomas Jefferson and the tinkering contemporaries of Mr. Smithson.

[Devon]

Really enjoyed the writing and story told overall -- a part of the Smithsonian's history I didn't yet know about.

I do wish the part of the book that focused on Adams' (and others') work to get the U.S. to establish what became the Smithsonian Institution was more fleshed out. It was fascinating to read how the arguments for an against a knowledge-diffusing institution ran parallel with the ever-escalating arguments about enslaving people in the U.S. on the congressional floor, but it felt rushed compared to the story of Smithson's birth and life, much of which had to be interpreted from barebones info and norms of the time.

[Mary Christopher]

Too many scientists

I wanted to read about John Smithson and the Smithsonian Institution, not about every scientist who lived in the 18th and 19th century! On almost every page there was at least one if not many more names in blue of scientists who had met Smithson during his lifetime.

It was interesting to find out how long it took congress to figure out what to do with his bequest.

[Patricia Robinson]

Interesting read of the man James Smithson and American politics

Learned about this obscure man who gave us a great institution. More interesting is the American politics behind the founding of the place. Politics was just as as crazy back then.

[Dyna Bennett]

Great Book!

This was a most informative book I’m so happy I read it.
I had no idea the Smithsonian was founded by an Englishman.
I was horrified to see how Congress was so ready to squander away the money.

[Barry Peffer]

Excellent historical book! I had no idea of all that happened to get the Smithsonian Institution started. Some of the political shenanigans described show me that not much has changed in politics since the mid 1800’s. I would recommend this to any history buff.

[Mary Beth]

What a fun informative book. Easy to read. Lots of information one may not know already. Also leaves a lot of questions about James Smithson that one could do more research about. Glad to have come across this book at a library sale.

[Nick Woodall]

I really liked this book. It helped me to understand the beginnings of the Smithsonian, as well as the history of the man behind it. Quite intriguing! Reads like a novel, and very well-written.

[Liza Greene]

First book of 2022

[Deb]

Interesting but slow going.

[Gg]

Finding tidbits of history that are not typically found is always a delight to this armchair historian. This book is full of such tidbits - a very good read.

[Annika Hipple]

I'm very familiar with the Smithsonian Institution, having visited many of the museums multiple times and served as tour leader for a lot of Smithsonian Journeys tours, among them an annual (until interrupted by the pandemic) week-long program in Oxford which has included a visit to Pembroke College, James Smithson's alma mater. It was through a talk there that I first discovered Smithson's fascinating personal story and became interested in learning more. I did learn more about Smithson and the founding of the Smithsonian from this book, but not as much as I'd hoped. Nina Burleigh has made a valiant effort to uncover more details, but unfortunately there just isn't all that much known about Smithson, in large part because pretty much all his papers and other personal effects went up in flames when the Smithsonian Castle building caught fire in 1865.

Burleigh did what she could with the material available, fleshing it out with a lot of details about the time and places Smithson lived in. At times I felt there was too much of this sort of background material, which sometimes felt like padding and occasionally became repetitious. I do feel that I know more about Smithson after reading this book, to the extent that it is possible. But unfortunately there will never be an answer to the big question of why he decided to leave his fortune to the young United States "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

The final third or so of the book deals with the efforts to secure Smithson's money and figure out what to do with it. Being so familiar with the Smithsonian as it exists today, I was surprised to learn about the various different ideas that were considered. Most astounding was the fact that many people didn't think the US should accept Smithson's money at all. Once the money did arrive in the US, much was lost through unauthorized bond purchases and eventually had to be replaced by the US Treasury. It was only through the dedicated efforts of a few key figures, among them Richard Rush, the envoy who spent nearly two years in England working to get Smithson's money released to the United States and then ensuring its safe transport across the Atlantic, and John Quincy Adams, who had a long career in the US House of Representatives after his one-term presidency, that the Smithsonian was born and ultimately developed into the national treasure that it is today. That said, I felt the title The Stranger and the Statesman was a bit of a misnomer, since the statesman, Adams, only appears in the final couple of chapters.

One thing the book is lacking is an index. There were a lot of people who were mentioned briefly, and it was often hard to keep track of who they were the next time they turned up. It frustrated me not to be able to look them up in an index to quickly find the earlier references.

[Mary Vermette]

Being a big fan of the Smithsonian, I thought this book would be right up my alley. Unfortunately it was a disappointment. There is not a lot of information about James Smithson, so the author spends much of her time writing about his family, the influential scientists he met, and the historical events happening during his life that may or may not have had an impact on his gift to the United States. Once he dies, the author often gets sidetracked with lots of information about various people who played their part in the forming of the Smithsonian. Its like she needs to share everything she uncovered in her research, but is not of great importance to the story she was trying to tell. She was also very repetitive at times. An editor who could have helped her with the organization and deleting unnecessary information would have helped a lot.

[Emma]

As a resident of the National Capital Region, I spend a lot of time in the various Smithsonian museums, but before I was gifted this book I knew comparatively little about the eccentric scientist who started it all. I knew that he was an Englishman who left his fortune to America despite never visiting the country and that he was reinterred at the Smithsonian Castle in the early 1900s, but that was about it. The full story turned out to be much messier and much more dramatic (not to mention much more interesting!) than I was expecting.

Nina Burleigh started by charting the life of James Smithson from the scandalous circumstances of his illegitimate birth — an aspect of Regency England that is a far cry from the demure tea rooms and quaint country balls of Jane Austen’s novels — to his eclectic scientific career, providing context for his decision to leave his fortune to the American people without making any assumptions about his reasoning.

(While we can ultimately only guess at his motivations, the author gives the reader all of the information needed to draw their own conclusions. Personally, I would not be surprised if Smithson, disadvantaged as he was by the circumstances of his birth, was drawn to the democracy of the fledgling United States when deciding the fate of his fortune. I also suspect that the fact that his legitimate half-brother Hugh — a man who, by all accounts, looked very like James but who was able to move through life without any of the hardships associated with illegitimacy — was a British officer during the Revolutionary War influenced his decision more than a little. The paragraphs detailing how Hugh was admitted into the Royal Society despite having no interest in or aptitude for science, while James had to work hard for even a fraction of the respect awarded automatically to his aristocratic brother, certainly made me seethe on his behalf!)

The final third of the book dealt with everything that happened after the United States received this unusual bequest. Although John Quincy Adams didn’t play as much of a part in things as the title suggests, he was certainly involved in detangling the messy politics that came perilously close to destroying the Smithsonian Institution before it had a chance to get off the ground. Many American politicians were suspicious both of Smithson’s intentions and of the federal government’s plans for implementing the will and the early Smithsonian had to survive everything from aggressively partisan politics and blatant corruption to money laundering and fire. The more I read, the more surprised I was that Smithson’s wish ever became a reality and the more pleased — both on his behalf and on behalf of humanity as a whole — I was that the Smithsonian Institution defied the odds to grow into the remarkable resource that it is today.