UNDER the shadow of Boston State House, turning its back on the house of John Hancock, the little passage called Hancock Avenue runs, or ran, from Beacon Street, skirting the State House grounds, to Mount Vernon Street, on the summit of Beacon Hill; and there, in the third house below Mount Vernon Place, February 16, 1838, a child was born, and christened later by his uncle, the minister of the First Church after the tenets of Boston Unitarianism, as Henry Brooks Adams...

The Education of Henry Adams, his posthumously-published memoirs in 1907, won the Pulitzer Prize, and went on to be named by The Modern Library as the top English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century. It records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams and is also a sharp critique of 19th century educational theory and practice. An important theme of the book is its author's bewilderment and concern at the rapid advance in science and technology over the course of his lifetime, sometimes now called Second Industrial Revolution but incarnated in his term "dynamo." In the book, the author complained that a lifelong hunt for some sort of order in the world, some sort of faith for man, left him completely baffled. The quiet, urbane style served well to underline, in an ironic way, the message of this pessimistic book.

Henry Adams（1838-1918）, a historian, man of letters and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents.He was best known for his History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, a 9-volume work, praised for its literary style, but sometimes criticised for inaccuracy. Adams is noted for an ironic literary style coupled with a detached, often bitter, tone.