Letters of John and Abigail Adams: 1762 to 1826

By Abigail Adams and John Adams

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0006RUVS8
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Westvaco Corp
• Length: 133 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Poorly Executed

I purchased this book after watching the latest Ken Burns’s documentary on the American Revolution in which Abigail Adams’s letters were read aloud. Her voice was witty, incisive, and deeply perceptive and I couldn’t help but imagine that she and Jane Austen would have been kindred spirits. Unfortunately, this particular edition was a disappointment. The selection of letters is quite limited and not focused solely on the correspondence between Abigail and John Adams, which is what I had expected. The final third of the book contains not a single letter written by Abigail herself, leaving the collection feeling unbalanced and misleading. The organization of the letters also felt oddly disjointed, lacking a clear narrative or editorial cohesion. At times, it reads more like an undergraduate design project than a thoughtfully curated historical publication. The formatting only adds to this impression as the letters are awkwardly broken mid-page and continued on the next, disrupting the reading experience unnecessarily. Abigail Adams’s voice remains compelling and worth seeking out, but I would strongly recommend finding a different edition of her correspondence. This one does not do justice to the material.