SOURCE: "Brooks Adams: Belligerent Brahmin," in Doubters and Dissenters: Cataclysmic Thought in America, 1885-1918, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, pp. 158-87.

In the following excerpt, Jaher surveys Adams's career and examines claims that Adams was an anti-Semite.

It was Brooks Adams's misfortune to be born in 1848. Had he lived a generation earlier or later he would have been a far happier man. Adams would then have escaped the frustration of estrangement from American life, the painful memory of decaying Brahmin prestige and power, and the obstacle of an unadaptable aristocratic outlook.

Patrician privilege, however, was still undisputed when the youngest son of Charles Francis Adams was born. Old families still counted, Irish immigrants had not yet overrun Boston, and Peter Charendon Brooks, the lad's merchant grandfather, was one of the richest men in the area. Massachusetts Whiggery, whether Conscience or Cotton, wielded a mighty influence, and Sumner and...