First Family: Abigail & John Adams

The prizewinning, 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.

Joseph J. Ellis gives us a story both intimate and panoramic: equal parts biography, political history, and love story. In a fifty-plus-year political and personal partnership, John and Abigail strategized over civic and foreign affairs as often as they discussed their children and Abigail’s loneliness during John’s extended absences required by his work. Their remarkable connection is epitomized in words he wrote to her after his election to the presidency: “I can do nothing without you.”

The Adams marriage—in all its complexity, richness, triumph, and sorrow—is revealed as never before in this masterly and essential work of history.


From the Hardcover edition.