Adams was schooled in the ascetic virtues of Puritan New England: thrift, hard work, self-criticism, public service, plain talk, and a morbid dread of ostentation. As a young man, he wrote, “A puffy, vain, conceited conversation never fails to bring a man into contempt, although his natural endowments be ever so great and his application and industry ever so intense.” 2 Much of his life’s drama arose from the intense, often fitful, sometimes tormenting struggle to measure up to his own impossibly high standards, and he never entirely made peace with his own craving for fame and recognition.
