This week our second episode of Presidential is starting outside the White House and I'm asking visitors what they know about John Adams.

Not too much.

What's the East Rio series of John Adams with the Fulgeumani?

Here's the second president of the United States.

I don't know.

If you're one of the rare people who do already know quite a lot about John Adams, the chances are good that that's thanks to David McCullough.

You either read his Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Adams or maybe you two saw that HBO mini series from a couple years back starring Paul Giamatti.

That was based on McCullough's biography.

Even historian David McCullough would say that history has not done a whole lot to keep John Adams top of mind for us today when it comes to American presidents.

We have to realize that popular symbolism has not been very generous toward Adams.

He is the only one of our founding fathers for whom there is no memorial, no statue, no building in his honor in our nation's capital.

And to me that is absolutely inexcusable.

It's a long past time when we should recognize what he did and who he was.

I'm Lillian Cunningham and this is the second episode of presidential.

This other sign of residency is that news from us.

What your country can do for good?

They date which will live in Stockholm.

Of our first three presidents, Washington and Jefferson have iconic memorials in DC.

And Adams has zip.

So we're going to look at why that is and explore the question of how monuments shape our collective memory of which presidents are important.

But first, what's going to better sense of Adams' character and his early story?

John Adams grew up in as simple as difficult a beginning family childhood life as Abraham Lincoln.

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