Adams family scholarship

Nagel was particularly known for his three books on the Adams political family of Massachusetts. While teaching at the University of Georgia, Nagel was a neighbor of former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Years later in a 1998 Booknotes interview, he recalled "And Mr. Rusk said to me, when he learned I was going to write about the Adamses--he said, 'There is no question John Quincy Adams is by far our greatest secretary of state.'"^[10] As part of his initial research on the Adams family, Nagel purchased copies of many of the papers of John Quincy Adams, and other Adams family members from the Massachusetts Historical Society. These documents were contained in 608 rolls of microfilm, and Nagel kept these in his possession until he completed his 1997 biography of John Quincy Adams, at which time he donated them to the Carleton College library. As he described it in his 1998 Booknotes interview:

They've all been filmed, to the great--well, th--to the benefit of the manuscripts, of course, and to the benefit of scholars. It's one of the reasons I decided to write about the Adamses, is because it could be marvelously convenient. You had all of this unbelievably revealing material actually in your home if you wanted to buy 608 reels of film... ...I was fortunate. I had helped the Massachu--Massachusetts Historical Society and they gave me a--a price I couldn't turn down... ...my wife and I hauled the 608 reels from university to university. And then when I gave up university life to write, we continued to have them. And just--when finishing this book, which is, I think, my last utterance on the Adamses, we gave them to--well, we gave them to Carleton College in Minnesota because they do such a great job in training undergraduates in history.^[11]

He went on to comment that he had read all of the documents contained in the 608 reels more than once, and said "I think I'm the only person in the United--in the world who has had the tenacity to do that."