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Abigail Adams: A Life Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 2010
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In this vivid new biography of Abigail Adams, the most illustrious woman of the founding era, Bancroft Award–winning historian Woody Holton offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Adams’s life story and of women’s roles in the creation of the republic.
Using previously overlooked documents from numerous archives, Abigail Adams shows that the wife of the second president of the United States was far more charismatic and influential than historians have realized. One of the finest writers of her age, Adams passionately campaigned for women’s education, denounced sex discrimination, and matched wits not only with her brilliant husband, John, but with Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. When male Patriots ignored her famous appeal to “Remember the Ladies,” she accomplished her own personal declaration of independence: Defying centuries of legislation that assigned married women’s property to their husbands, she amassed a fortune in her own name.
Adams’s life story encapsulates the history of the founding era, for she defined herself in relation to the people she loved or hated (she was never neutral), a cast of characters that included her mother and sisters; Benjamin Franklin and James Lovell, her husband’s bawdy congressional colleagues; Phoebe Abdee, her father’s former slave; her financially naïve husband; and her son John Quincy.
At once epic and intimate, Abigail Adams, sheds light on a complicated, fascinating woman, one of the most beloved figures of American history.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJune 1, 2010
- Dimensions6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101416546812
- ISBN-13978-1416546818
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“Holton vividly captures the brilliance, charm, and spunk of Abigail Adams, and shows why she deserves her place at the table along with her husband John and the other Founders. A must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation.” --Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
"Captivating... biography and social history. Through his engaging prose, Holton provides a nuanced picture of Adams as representative of many women of her era yet also ahead of her time." --Journal of American History
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Atria Books; 1st edition (June 1, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1416546812
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416546818
- Item Weight : 1.24 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #198,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #400 in U.S. Revolution & Founding History
- #554 in Women in History
- #2,320 in Women's Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Woody Holton (Ph.D., Duke University) is an McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches classes on African Americans, Native America, early American women, the origins of the Constitution, Abigail Adams, and the era of the American Revolution. He is especially interested in studying the impact of ordinary citizens on grand political events. He is the author of Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (1999), which won the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Social History Award; Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (2007), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Abigail Adams, which won the Bancroft Prize.
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Holton's "Abigail Adams" was immensely readable as well as thought-provoking: for example, it made me wonder how many other women of that era felt the same as she did about women's rights, or the lack thereof? AA might not have been an anomaly, were we able to ever know. The obvious fact is, her letters to her husband and other family members were preserved because the Adams family was famous. It's interesting just to wonder, since it can never be discovered, how many other women felt exactly the same way, especially about the lack of education, legal rights (especially regarding abuse), and the inability to own anything in their own right? Her sisters obviously felt the same way, and it stands to reason that other women did too. However, some might not have had the type of husband or families that would even "permit" a discussion of these rights, much less "allow" her to handle monetary transactions and advise others as well. (Witness the one or two star reviews by people who even now feel threatened by the "feminist" from over two-hundred years ago). I would think that it would have taken a lot of courage to express those kind of beliefs during a time when women were little more than slaves. AA had a loving and mostly supportive husband, but others could have risked their lives for saying and doing the same things. It also makes me wonder if any of her direct descendants, male or female, were especially inspired enough by her ideas to try to change anything?
Finally, I learned so much history of the lives of real people from reading her letters. This book, however, was not just the letters; I've read other bios of AA, and I particularly liked the way Prof Holton interpreted and explained them. I'm a lifelong history lover/reader and I agree with another reviewer that it's books like this one that should be assigned EARLY in school history classes (middle school, at least?) so that people will grow up wanting to learn about the history of our country and world! It is so interesting and exciting, everyone should read this book and others like it. Thank you Professor Holton!
The only possible negative aspect is that the details do sometimes slow the reader.
One can hardly curtail one's admiration for this woman. The biographer writes with a sense of wonder at all these achievements. His scholarship is remarkable in its thoroughness.
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True to this, John Adams is very much a background figure in this biography. When writing of the wives of powerful and important men, too often the primary figure herself tends to get lost, obscured not only by the force and vigour of the male characters, but by the lack of documentary evidence available. It is fortunate then that Abigail and John were both great letter-writers, often separated for months on end by John's political career, and that Abigail did not destroy her correspondence upon her death, unlike George Washington's wife Martha.
Abigail comes across an immensely likeable figure and one modern audiences can immediately sympathise with, with her frustration at the lack of educational opportunities for women, her 'sauciness' and independent will, her financial transactions and political opinions. She lived in a truly remarkable era, and it's as much as a testament to her own character as the skill of the author that the Revolution itself pales in interest to Abigail's own life, much as the two were inseparable intertwined.