As I post this review at the start of the month of November 2020, anything presidential related maybe the last thing on your mind. I typically spend my month of November with a book about a president or about our country. My book review this month is actually two books “John Adams” by David Mc Cullough, our second president, and the first lady “Abigail Adams” by Woody Holton.
I read the John Adams book back in April 2011 and the Abigail Adams book back in May 2011. Both books prompted me to visit both John Adams birthplace and The Old House at Peace Field (where he lived with Abigail) on a 2015 trip to Boston with my family.
First, don’t let the 600+ pages by David Mc Cullough deter you, you will not want to put down John Adams, and wish it was another 600+ pages.
John Adams was our second president, and a one-term president. Even though he was a one-term president, he had a significant role in several areas that were not of the office of the president – he had roles with our Declaration of Independence, on the foreign relations front with his travels to England and Europe, as well as with his relationships with the major players who helped found our country.
I liked that John Adams gave the written word a strong role in his life, he was well read and wrote many letters and journal during his life. I found his later relationship (which consisted primarily of correspondence) with Thomas Jefferson interesting.
When I was finished with the John Adams book, I wanted to learn more about his wife Abigail. Luckily, Woody Holton’s book filled the bill. Abigail was a true partner to John Adams. She found herself in the role of not only wife and mother but the primary keeper of the home front while John was away on his many travels across the Atlantic. She matched John in her love of the written word, as she was well read and wrote many letters in her lifetime to John, her sisters and friends. She truly was an independent woman and thinker in an era where she had no role models or mentors to even influence her to have her own thoughts. Finally, she had a strong impact on our country for a woman in her era, she was the wife of our second President and mother of our sixth President.
Give yourself a treat this election year, and spend some time with our second president, John Adams and his wife Abigail. You will not be disappointed.
Me: I am Diane M. Spolar and I live in Willowbrook, Illinois (a suburb outside of Chicago) with my husband, son and cat. I am a CPA by day and a reader by night and on the weekends. I am a lifelong lover of books.
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