The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters Paperback - 1989

From the publisher

The New York Times Book Review called Paul Nagel's highly acclaimed Descent from Glory "magnificent;" The Christian Science Monitor proclaimed it "splendid." While that book focused on the men in the Adams family, many readers--and Nagel himself--felt that the story of the women
represented the more compelling and stirring part of the Adams family saga. Now we have the book so many readers have urged Nagel to write: the full story of some of the most fascinating, important, and articulate women in American history. Nagel does not treat this volume as merely a sequel to
the first book; he, instead, strives to do justice to an extraordinary group of individuals who happened to be women and whose personal stories and outlooks have historically played a subordinate role to the lives of the famous men who surrounded them.
Nagel presents three generations of remarkable women, including Abigail Adams, who achieved fame and recognition as a First Lady and as America's outstanding woman letter writer; her younger sister--also a writer--Elizabeth Shaw Peabody; Nabby Adams Smith, Abigail's daughter, who found
herself caught between a domineering mother, a rascal husband, and a distracted father; Louisa Catherine Adams, John Quincy's wife, who ultimately triumphed over family difficulties, including Abigail's disapproval, to become the Adams matriarch and heroine of their story; Abby Brown Brooks,
Boston's richest young lady as well as Henry Adams' mother; and Nancy Harrod and Mary Hellen, who struggled to survive marriage to alcoholics.
Using the abundant commentary and confessions these women shared with one another, much of it surviving in the Adams Papers, Nagel portrays his subjects as they saw themselves and each other. No other American historical record offers such a degree of frankness and detail. Nagel reveals the
joy, sorrow, dreariness, and peril which came to them, as it did to all women of that era. This intimate and candid portrait, thus, stands as one of the best records of how American women actually lived and thought between 1750 and 1850.

About the author