In the book “A Magnificent Catastrophe” the author, Edward J. Larson, writes about all of the little details that has occurred in the First Presidential Campaign in the 1800s. He begins his book with how the two parties, the Republicans (Jefferson) and Federalists (Adams), were going to compete in who will govern the United States now that it is a free country and no longer under Britain’s rule. Although they had at first been friends they soon became enemies because of how they believed the government should be. Jefferson believed that the government should be a populist government that trusted popular rule.
While Adams believed that America should have a strong government and that al the power rested in the president. When Adams was president he brought fear when he was engaged in the XYZ Affair which is when he bribed the French to comply with their negotiations. The people in America feared that they would be ruled by a foreign power. Adams used his presidential power to threaten people or bribe them into doing whatever he wanted. When Jefferson won the election of the 1800s he fixed all the wrongs that Adams had done.
Larson’s book has many positive aspects that have taught me more about the election of the 1800s than any classroom would have. The positive aspects that I found from the book was that I learned more than I would have inside of a class because there was more of the little details that happened in the election of the 1800s. The book provided all the background details that would not have been provided in a classroom. Providing these details helped me understand the election of the 1800s and make sense of it all. Before this book I would have never known that Adams and Jefferson were close friends.
At once Adams family gladly took in Jefferson and his two sons into their family because they had nowhere else to live. The Adams had considered Jefferson’s sons as their own sons and looked after them as they would have their own family members. Another positive aspect that Larson has inputted into his book is the photographs. Inputting the photographs of the men of that time put a face to who was talking and what their thoughts were about at the time. Having the photographs of the electoral votes taught me how they were shown to people in the newspapers and what each state voted for.
The 1793 cartoon that showed Thomas Jefferson leading the Federalists in a meeting taught me that people really thought they were evil and horrible people as there is a devil in the corner watching the men talk. Also, Larson has inserted at the end of his book pages titled Notes which helps the readers see exactly where he got his information from and the years and by who in which had originally wrote the information. The pages titled Notes is a positive because it shows that his evidence that he found about the election is credible.
The photographs, the small background details, and the pages titled Notes are the positives that Larson has contributed in his book. The negative aspects of this book was that it was boring to me. Although I did learn a lot from it it did not catch my interest of wanting to read other books that cover this topic of the election. Another negative aspect is that the diction that were used in the book were most of the time confusing and I did not understand it. Larson could have inserted some more interesting events that occurred during the election.
Although this book taught me more about the election I did not find it interesting and the diction that was used throughout the book left me confused because I did not understand the words. This book covered the election of the 1800s in a lot of detail. Larson covered all of the little details and even inserted people such as Adams’ thoughts from his journal. The author accomplished in explaining why the election of the 1800s was so important and how it shows that today’s elections are very similar to the election of the 1800s.
For example, how the president believed in one thing the vice president believed in something completely different. That is similar to today because the president and vice president are sometimes in different parties. Larson covers the election of the 1800s in a historical view as he only inputs the facts and the background details that contributed to the election of the 1800s. The author has covered how the election of the 1800s came up and how the start of the two different political parties had come up and how different their beliefs were.
Larson has accomplished in describing how the election of the 1800s were in his book providing details about the important events that has happened at the time. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy history and are interested in it, but not to someone who has no interest in the matter. If someone was doing a project on the election of the 1800s this book would be the first to come to mind because it did teach me a lot of things that I would not have learned in a classroom because there is only so much information that my teachers can cover about the topic in such a short amount of time.
This book covers pretty much every single little detail that has to do with the election of the 1800s, which is why someone will learn a lot from this book. However I would not recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something fun to read because In conclusion, Larson has succeeded in covering all of the information of the election of the 1800s in this book and how similar our elections are today to the one in the past. Reading this book has taught me many things that I would have learned in school. Learning about the little details in the election helped me understand how important this election was.
