American journalist and author of more than 50 books of fiction, biography, and exposé.

Adams graduated from Hamilton College in 1891 and was with the New York Sun until 1900. From 1901 to 1905 he was associated in various editorial and advertising capacities with McClure's syndicate and McClure's Magazine.

One of the so-called muckrakers of the period, Adams contributed to Collier's, the National Weekly in 1905 a series of articles exposing quack patent medicines, followed by The Great American Fraud (1906), which furthered the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. In articles appearing in 1915–16 in the New York Tribune, he exposed dishonourable practices in advertising. The novel Revelry (1926) and a biography of Warren G. Harding, Incredible Era (1939), set forth the scandals of the Harding administration. Adams also wrote biographies of Daniel Webster (The Godlike Daniel, 1930) and Alexander Woollcott (1945). Several of his novels became movie scenarios, notably It Happened One Night (1934) and a musical, The Harvey Girls (1942). Grandfather Stories (1955) was based on reminiscences of his grandfather in upper New York State. He also wrote under the name Warner Fabian.