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Today’s solidarity-in-animosity makes Henry Adams’s definition of politics as “the systematic organization of hatreds” more accurate than it was when he wrote it in his 1907 autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams.”

Notwithstanding passionate endorsements by multiple people whose taste I admire, I remain unconvinced of the alleged importance and excellence of “The Education of Henry Adams.”

Some explicitly embrace the formulation; “The Education of Henry Adams” is the second most influential memoir in American letters, after Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography.

His critique of the cultural impact of industrial capitalism was most clearly presented in a posthumously published memoir, “The Education of Henry Adams.”

The volume’s focus is confined to the 20th century, with its earliest selection from 1907, “The Education of Henry Adams,” wherein Adams recalled visiting “the great hall of dynamos” at a 1900 exposition of modern technologies.