“Abigail Adams” - Woody Holton

• Abigail Adams was a prolific letter writer. We can see an intelligent woman grappling with traditional views of a woman’s place, with her own desire for higher education. Her views change and develop before our eyes. But her personal thoughts are all in the form of her correspondence, so we can assume that she only puts to paper that which would not reflect poorly on the Adamses. And despite John Adams being a compulsive diarist, Holton doesn’t rely upon any of his presumably more candid thoughts, and there are but few reflections from other sources.

• The biography did highlight the significant hardship AA faced mostly on her own as JA was away on public service missions. She coped with a dysentery epidemic, smallpox inoculation, sixth pregnancy on her own all while under direct British threat during the Revolution. Most interestingly (to me) she contended with the real world effects of inflation and depreciation of Continental paper currency, and the acute labor shortage during the war.

• I really do not recommend this biography - I don’t know if it is a lack of diverse primary sources, but this rendering felt one-dimensional. At least in this book, Holton lacks the elegant narrative style of Chernow or McCullough. At times, it read like a simple, dry recitation of correspondence, only to be interrupted by Holton’s occasional use of oddly casual modern slang (“ticked off”).

Several subjects were glossed over in this biography, that I had hoped would have been addressed.

• Boston massacre: no insight on marital discussion over JA defense of British soldiers; simply that JA “readily agreed” 
• Based on Chernow’s “Washington” and “Hamilton,” I have a sense of JA’s  growing bitterness during his vice-presidency, and his peak vaingloriousness. It’s barely mentioned here.
• More on JA’s presidency as according to biographers of Hamilton and Washington, JA became increasingly irrational and paranoid; the AA correspondence is placid during this turbulent time (not that I expected her letters to indicate otherwise; she was obviously too tactful for that).