First Family

Zusatztext Written with the grace and style one expects from Ellis. . . . John Adams could not have a better biographer. The Los Angeles Times Authoritative. . . . Ellis employs his narrative gifts to draw a remarkably intimate portrait of John and Abigail's marriage as it played out against the momentous events that marked the birth of a nation. Michiko Kakutani! The New York Times A brilliant book. . . . Provocatively interpretive! carefully researched! and gracefully written. Providence Journal A stirring portrait of a marriage. First Family reminds us that in certain presidencies (FDR and Clinton spring to mind)! there is no closer adviser than a brilliant spouse! improving the thoughts of her husband! often before he has even conceived them. The Boston Globe Engaging. . . . Ellis does a marvelous job of capturing Abigail and John at their boldest and most vulnerable. . . . He possesses a rare understanding of human nature. In First Family ! he has given us the story of a marriage worth emulating and! not least! a subtle reflection on 'the perils of parenting.' Chicago Tribune Richly detailed. . . . Erudite as well as eloquent! First Family proves that bedfellows can make superior politics. Richmond Times-Dispatch Informationen zum Autor Joseph J. Ellis Klappentext In this rich and engrossing account! John and Abigail Adams come to life against the backdrop of the Republic's tenuous early years. Drawing on over 1!200 letters exchanged between the couple! Ellis tells a story both personal and panoramic. We learn about the many years Abigail and John spent apart as John's political career sent him first to Philadelphia! then to Paris and Amsterdam; their relationship with their children; and Abigail's role as John's closest and most valued advisor. Exquisitely researched and beautifully written! First Family is both a revealing portrait of a marriage and a unique study of America's early years. PREFACE My serious interest in the Adams family began twenty years ago, when I wrote a book about John Adams in retirement, eventually published as Passionate Sage . I had a keen sense that I was stepping into a long- standing conversation between Abigail and John in its final phase. And I had an equivalently clear sense that the conversation preserved in the roughly twelve hundred letters between them constituted a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history. I moved on to different historical topics over the ensuing years, but I made a mental note to come back to the extraordinarily rich Adams archive, then read all their letters and tell the full story of their conversation within the context of America's creation as a people and a nation. The pages that follow represent my attempt to do just that. The distinctive quality of their correspondence, apart from its sheer volume and the dramatic character of the history that was happening around them, is its unwavering emotional honesty. All of us who have fallen in love, tried to raise children, suffered extended bouts of doubt about the integrity of our ambitions, watched our once youthful bodies betray us, harbored illusions about our impregnable principles, and done all this with a partner traveling the same trail know what unconditional commitment means, and why, especially today, it is the exception rather than the rule. Abigail and John traveled down that trail about two hundred years before us, remained lovers and friends throughout, and together had a hand in laying the foundation of what is now the oldest enduring republic in world history. And they left a written record of all the twitches, traumas, throbbings, and tribulations along the ...

Autorentext
Joseph J. Ellis

Klappentext
In this rich and engrossing account, John and Abigail Adams come to life against the backdrop of the Republic's tenuous early years. Drawing on over 1,200 letters exchanged between the couple, Ellis tells a story both personal and panoramic. We learn about the many years Abigail and John spent apart as John's political career sent him first to Philadelphia, then to Paris and Amsterdam; their relationship with their children; and Abigail's role as John's closest and most valued advisor. Exquisitely researched and beautifully written, First Family is both a revealing portrait of a marriage and a unique study of America's early years.

Leseprobe
PREFACE

My serious interest in the Adams family began twenty years ago, when I wrote a book about John Adams in retirement, eventually published as Passionate Sage. I had a keen sense that I was stepping into a long- standing conversation between Abigail and John in its final phase. And I had an equivalently clear sense that the conversation preserved in the roughly twelve hundred letters between them constituted a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history.

I moved on to different historical topics over the ensuing years, but I made a mental note to come back to the extraordinarily rich Adams archive, then read all their letters and tell the full story of their conversation within the context of America’s creation as a people and a nation. The pages that follow represent my attempt to do just that.

The distinctive quality of their correspondence, apart from its sheer volume and the dramatic character of the history that was happening around them, is its unwavering emotional honesty. All of us who have fallen in love, tried to raise children, suffered extended bouts of doubt about the integrity of our ambitions, watched our once youthful bodies betray us, harbored illusions about our impregnable principles, and done all this with a partner traveling the same trail know what unconditional commitment means, and why, especially today, it is the exception rather than the rule.

Abigail and John traveled down that trail about two hundred years before us, remained lovers and friends throughout, and together had a hand in laying the foundation of what is now the oldest enduring republic in world history. And they left a written record of all the twitches, traumas, throbbings, and tribulations along the way. No one else has ever done that.

To be sure, there were other prominent couples in the revolutionary era— George and Martha Washington as well as James and Dolley Madison come to mind. But no other couple left a documentary record of their mutual thoughts and feelings even remotely comparable to Abigail and John’s. (Martha Washington burned almost all the letters to and from her husband.) And at the presidential level, it was not until Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt occupied the White House that a wife exercised an influence over policy decisions equivalent to Abigail’s.

It is the interactive character of their private story and the larger public story of the American founding that strikes me as special. Recovering their experience as a couple quite literally forces a focus on the fusion of intimate psychological and emotional experience with the larger political narrative. Great events, such as the battle of Bunker Hill, the debate over the Declaration of Independence, and the presidential election of 1800, become palpable human experiences rather than grandiose abstractions. They lived through a truly formative phase of American history and left an unmatched record of what it was like to shape it, and have it happen to them.

As I see it, then, Abigail and John have much to teach us about both the reasons for that improbable success called the American
Revolution and the equally startling capacity for a man and woman—husband and wife— to sustain their love over a lifetime filled wit…

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