"John and Abigail Adams sired the first dynasty to shape American politics, but they would not witness their family's calamitous fall from grace. When President John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow death of the family's political legacy -- a decline that mirrored the fall of the Republican Party. The Adamses would abandon their forefather's enlightened republicanism, yielding to the temptation of oligarchy and personal spoils. In Heirs...