Deftly and with a brilliant eye for detail, McCullough describes the childhood, youth, and coming of age of Adams, the fiercely driven Massachusetts farmer-lawyer whose marriage to Abigail is one of the great real-life love stories, and of his rival Jefferson, the Virginia planter and slaveowner. Through their lives, McCullough explores the extraordinary factors that transformed thirteen colonies into a united nation and that eventually brought these two distinctly dissimilar men to the presidency.
Sweeping the reader from America to Europe, and combining a cast of compelling characters with probing explorations of politics, courage, idealism, love, friendship, and life, John Adams. is bound to be the most talked-about book of the season.