John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy [Hardcover]

John Paul Jones is the latest "self-made man" to appear in a biography, following on the heels of Willard Sterne Randall's cumbersome yet well-rendered "Alexander Hamilton: A Life." From humble roots, the son of a Scottish gardener, Jones was determined to rise from under the oppression of the European class system. He gazed out across the magnificent gardens created by his father and saw the ocean, with its seemingly endless horizon -and that is how Jones decided to live the rest of his life: He would expand, grow himself and mold his image anew, as wide as the sea, as broad as the sky.

As much taken with sail and sea as they took him, John Paul Jones was a natural, a gifted sailor who always tried to improve himself, whether his nautical skills, or by reading books to absorb philosophy and seeking the company of men from whom he knew he could learn. Unfortunately, Jones was never able to subdue his passions sufficiently, not sufficiently enough for any self-reflection to temper his sensitivities and thin skin, nor for him to ever cultivate the necessary strengths to achieve his highest ambition: Appointment to the rank of Admiral in the United States Navy. He would have to travel to Russia near the end of his life and enter the service of Catherine the Great to achieve that rank, but as fundamentally flawed and blameful as Jones was, he was not a rank human being. He was steadfast, loyal to his adopted country, America, and never gave in to the easy profit of privateering or ever turned his back on the Stars and Stripes.

He was as big-hearted and melodramatic as he was tragic and romantic, a sometimes womanizer who barely had a head for wine and never drank hard liquor. Like Thomas Jefferson, Jones was a paragon of paradox and yet always was, in the best sense, an American patriot.

It's painful to look on, page after page, reading about Jones's exploits and ideas, tactics and tales, only to see him constantly self-destruct, eventually alienating every single person around him. Nonetheless, Jones knew how to fight in an age where most men achieved rank through connections and lineage, and even though he didn't always win, he won enough: Jones was a tonic for fledgling America, and any other person or power savvy enough to employ his courage.

Sadly, Jones was far from the best judge of character, and often found himself in an impossibly frustrating, nightmarish circumstance because of his own inability to discern veneer from character, though Jones seems to have had plenty of character, and yet constantly coveted superficial laurels of those less worthy. But no matter how badly he may have comported himself, and in spite of how myopic most of his handlers were, blinded to Jones's full potential, "Little Jones" was indeed a mouse that roared.

Whether Jones ever knew it during his life, he certainly reflected the rigid principles of honor to which he held himself and others, and Evan Thomas has written a flowing, absorbing book about John Paul Jones, a man who cherished freedom above all else, and helped bring it to so many others.

As Thomas dramatically illustrates, Jones was virtually the only captain among the Americans to have any success against the Royal Navy. Jones's raids against the British home isles and his daring defeats in two diferent battles against Royal Navy battleships made him famous world wide. Thomas's detailed accounts of the naval battles are particularly gripping. And while Jones most likely never said the famous words, "I have not yet begun to fight," that does not detract from his heroic refusal to surrender his ship in what was perhaps the bloodiest naval battle of the age of sail.

Thomas tracks Jones's entire life, from his childhood as the son of a Scottish gardner, to his time as a merchant ship captain through his Revolutionary exploits to the last, bizarre chapter in his life when he became an Admiral in the Russian fleet against the Turks. Thomas is evenhanded in his descriptions of Jones, detailing his many faults in addition to his triumphs. In the end, the picture that emerges is of an essentially noble individual whose insecurities made him his own worst enemy. At just over 300 pages of narrative, the book is a relatively quick read and also has plenty of illustrations.

Overall, an outstanding historical biography that should be enjoyed by history buffs and even by more casual readers.

Empathetically and skilfully, Thomas has portrayed John Paul Jones with much more psychological credibility and consistency than the previous "standard" biographer, the patrician Samuel Eliot Morison. We now see a new J-P-Jones: he's a real Jones, a flawed Jones; a great Jones.
The author visited Jones's birthplace in Scotland and spent time aboard sailing ships (he's an accomplished sailor, anyway); he revisited a wealth of documentation. He tried to get inside the man's mind. The resulting portrait of a ruthlessly ambitious, social-climbing naval genius with almost no fear is essential reading for anyone wondering how America's great fleets ever came to dominate the seas.