First Family: Abigail and John Adams
Joseph J. Ellis, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307269621
Summary
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, best-selling author of Founding Brothers and His Excellency brings America’s preeminent first couple to life in a moving and illuminating narrative that sweeps through the American Revolution and the republic’s tenuous early years.
John and Abigail Adams left an indelible and remarkably preserved portrait of their lives together in their personal correspondence: both Adamses were prolific letter writers (although John conceded that Abigail was clearly the more gifted of the two), and over the years they exchanged more than twelve hundred letters. Joseph J. Ellis distills this unprecedented and unsurpassed record to give us an account both intimate and panoramic; part biography, part political history, and part love story.
Ellis describes the first meeting between the two as inauspicious—John was twenty-four, Abigail just fifteen, and each was entirely unimpressed with the other. But they soon began a passionate correspondence that resulted in their marriage five years later.
Over the next decades, the couple were separated nearly as much as they were together. John’s political career took him first to Philadelphia, where he became the boldest advocate for the measures that would lead to the Declaration of Independence. Yet in order to attend the Second Continental Congress, he left his wife and children in the middle of the war zone that had by then engulfed Massachusetts. Later he was sent to Paris, where he served as a minister to the court of France alongside Benjamin Franklin. These years apart stressed the Adamses’ union almost beyond what it could bear: Abigail grew lonely, while the Adams children suffered from their father’s absence.
John was elected the nation’s first vice president, but by the time of his reelection, Abigail’s health prevented her from joining him in Philadelphia, the interim capital. She no doubt had further reservations about moving to the swamp on the Potomac when John became president, although this time he persuaded her. President Adams inherited a weak and bitterly divided country from George Washington. The political situation was perilous at best, and he needed his closest advisor by his side: “I can do nothing,” John told Abigail after his election, “without you.”
In Ellis’s rich and striking new history, John and Abigail’s relationship unfolds in the context of America’s birth as a nation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—USA
• Education—B.A. College of William and Mary; M.A., Ph.D.,
Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 2001; National Book Award, 1997
• Currently—Amherst Massachusetts, USA
Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, he served as a captain in the army and taught at West Point before coming to Mount Holyoke in 1972. He was dean of the faculty there for ten years.
Among his previous books are Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, Founding Brothers, and American Sphinx, which won the 1997 National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and their three sons. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
We may not learn anything appreciably new about the Adams family, per se, but in First Family Mr. 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 - New York Times
Written with the grace and style one expects from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers...John Adams could not have a better biographer.
Los Angeles Times
Ellis’s strength is his ability to portray historical icons as real human beings, and his talent remains sharp.... Ellis has made himself into a sort of bard of our early Republic, and [First Family] is a fitting addition to his repertoire.
Anne Bartlett - Miami Herald
The author’s fluid style penetrates a correspondence studded with classical references, political dish, felicitous turns of phrases and unvarnished pleadings of affection and anxiety. America’s first power couple enjoyed, teased and rescued each other during 54 years of marriage.
John E. Lazarus - Newark Star-Ledger
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Ellis (Founding Brothers) gives "the premier husband-wife team in all American history" starring roles in an engrossing romance. His Abigail has an acute intellect, but is not quite a protofeminist heroine: her ambitions are limited to being a mother and helpmeet, and in the iconic correspondence she often strikes the traditional pose of a neglected wife who sacrifices her happiness by giving up her husband to the call of duty. The author's more piquant portrait of John depicts an insecure, mercurial, neurotic man stabilized by Abigail's love and advice. Ellis's implicit argument—that the John/Abigail partnership lies at the foundation of the Adams family's public achievements--is a bit over-played, and not always to the advantage of the partnership: "Her judgment was a victim of her love for John…," Ellis writes of Abigail's support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, the ugliest blot on John's presidency, all of which explains little and excuses less. Still, Ellis's supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history's upheavals.
Publishers Weekly
On the heels of Woody Holton's prize-winning Abigail Adams, renowned historian Ellis (history, Mount Holyoke Coll.) returns to the well-trod ground of the founding era, this time shifting his focus to America's "first family" and political dynasty, the Adamses. Bringing his talents for narrative writing to the task, Ellis recounts the compelling relationship that included an awkward courtship and a life of sacrifice along with raising a family and constructing a legacy. However, here—unlike in Edith B. Gelles's Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage and G.J. Barker-Benfield's forthcoming Abigail & John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility—Abigail is frequently relegated to the sidelines as the narrative becomes yet another biography of John. And there is nothing new here. Verdict: Lacking the intellectual depth of Ellis's previous American Sphinx and the originality of his Founding Brothers, his new book nevertheless imparts a poignant tale. Biography buffs who haven't yet read about John and Abigail may well enjoy this; those familiar with the subject have no need for it. —Brian Odom, Pelham P.L., AL
Library Journal
Ellis is that rare professional historian who can eloquently convey both information and insight with remarkable clarity... he has once again given us a consistently engaging dual biography and love story as well as an insightful exploration of early American history. —Roger Bishop
Bookpage
In addition to looking at the strengths of the Adams’ marriage, the book examines the toll taken by their years apart and the misfortunes in the lives of all their children except John Quincy. Ellis has produced a very readable history of the nation’s founding as lived by these two. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
(Starred review) The author’s beautiful writing draws the reader wholly into this relationship, bringing new perspective to the historical importance of this enduring love story. An impeccable account of the politics, civics and devotion behind the Adams marriage.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The First Family:
1. Some reviewers say Ellis's book offers little new about Abigail and John Adams. Was it new to you? Have you learned something you didn't know before? Or is it rehashing old ground...things you've already read about the couple and their role in history? If you've read other works on the Adamses, how does this book compare?
2. The marriage of John and Abigail Adams is one of the most famous in U.S. history. What is it that draws the two to one another? Talk about their relationship as Ellis portrays it. What makes it work? What are its weak points ... and its strengths? Who was the more independent ... and who the more dependent—either...or neither?
3. Does the Adams marriage offer any lessons to those of us in the 21st century? Can we learn from a marriage that occurred over 200 years ago when cultural expectations were very different? How would you compare their relationship to one another with your own relationship(s)?
4. What does Ellis mean by "the paradox of proximity"?
5. How supportive is Abigail of John's growing political involvement and ambitions? What does she reveal in letters to friends and relatives? What affect does John's choice of career have on her and on their marriage? Male or female, how would your partner's absences and political involvements affect you?
6. Talk about how Ellis presents John's famous temper and the possible reasons for it. How would you describe John Adams? Was he justified in his mistrust of his colleagues...or are his constant suspicions a sign of a deeper paranoia?
7. Describe Abigail Adams. Was she a feminist...or a forerunner of feminists? If so, why so...if not, why not?
8. What kind of parents are John and Abigail Adams? What about their clear favoritism of John Quincy?
9. The Jefferson-Adams friendship and enmity is long famous. Talk about that relationship, it's dissolution and the later reconciliation? What prompted the friendship...what dissolved it? How does this book affect your attitude toward Jefferson, a famously enigmatic figure?
10. Talk about the press in the early days of the nation—its reflection, even fueling, of a deep political divisiveness. Are there similarities to today's media coverage of politics? Or not.
11. In what way does Ellis take sides in the Adams-Hamilton debate. How does Hamilton come across in Ellis's portrayal of him?
12. Consider watching clips from the 2008 PBS John Adams mini-series, based on David McCullough's 2001 book, John Adams. The series stars Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. It's excellent! Make comparisons to Ellis's book.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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