Página inicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquise No Site
Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados do Google Livros

Clique em uma foto para ir ao Google Livros

Dearest Friend : A Life of Abigail Adams de…
Carregando...

Dearest Friend : A Life of Abigail Adams (original: 1981; edição: 2002)

de Lynne Withey

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
7271030,913 (3.7)31
The lively, authoritative, New York Times bestselling biography of Abigail Adams. This is the life of Abigail Adams, wife of patriot John Adams, who became the most influential woman in Revolutionary America. Rich with excerpts from her personal letters, Dearest Friend captures the public and private sides of this fascinating woman, who was both an advocate of slave emancipation and a burgeoning feminist, urging her husband to "Remember the Ladies" as he framed the laws of their new country. John and Abigail Adams married for love. While John traveled in America and abroad to help forge a new nation, Abigail remained at home, raising four children, managing their estate, and writing letters to her beloved husband. Chronicling their remarkable fifty-four-year marriage, her blossoming feminism, her battles with loneliness, and her friendships with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Dearest Friend paints a portrait of Abigail Adams as an intelligent, resourceful, and outspoken woman.… (mais)
Membro:ksmyth
Título:Dearest Friend : A Life of Abigail Adams
Autores:Lynne Withey
Informação:Touchstone (2002), Paperback
Coleções:Sua biblioteca
Avaliação:
Etiquetas:american history, biography, adams family

Informações da Obra

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams de Lynne Withey (1981)

Carregando...

Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Veja também 31 menções

Mostrando 1-5 de 10 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
This is an account of the life and political times of Abigail Adams and her family before, during, and after the Revolutionary War through her and John Adams' letters. Includes her children's lives, especially her son, John Quincy Adams. ( )
  baughga | Nov 13, 2022 |
Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "More great reading about the founding of America from the dedicated letter writers John and Abigail Adams. She was a much a founding parent as he, definitely influencing his thinking and actions. From amazon.com online review: "This book chronicles their remarkable marriage, her blossoming feminism, her battles with the loneliness of separation, and her friendships with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other giants of her time. Intelligent, resourceful, and outspoken, Abigail Adams lived an uncommon life for a woman of her time. First published in 1981, Dearest Friend brings her legacy to our century"" ( )
  MGADMJK | Nov 6, 2022 |
LOVE this style of writing. Completely non-academic. Lynne Withey tells the story of Abigail Adams with great care and nuance. And what a wonderful subject. Abagail was an amazing woman for her time; perfectly suited for the brilliant but typically cantankerous John Adams.

Highly recommend. ( )
  Jarratt | Oct 2, 2022 |
Owning this book was sort of an accident. I had put a book called My Dearest Friend on my wishlist -- it was supposed to be largely just the collected letters between Abigail and John Adams. Andrew had made a list of the books on my wishlist and headed to a local bookstore and picked this up instead, thinking he'd gotten the book on my list. Oh, well. It was still very sweet!

This is more a straight-up biography, of course largely based on those letters, among other things, and sometimes containing excerpts from those letters. It seemed promising, with a lovely quote on the front from The Boston Globe of all places, saying it was "as lively, sensible, and forthright as the woman about whom it is written..." Personally, I would drop the word "lively" from the description. At times this book was so dry that the only thing that kept me reading was how excessively interested in Abigail Adams I have been from the beginning.

I acknowledge that I may have made the author's task more difficult by an over-familiarity with the subject. The basic details of her life I already know -- from 1776 and the John Adams mini-series, among other places. Every once in a while, Dearest Friend would sputter into life, and I would sit up, feeling like I was getting a truer glimpse into the details of Abigail's life -- a feeling for what it really must have been like to live that life. Then it would fade back into what seemed like a dry recitation of "and then this happened, and then this...."

I am probably being overly harsh on this poor book. Maybe the quote on the cover jaded me. Maybe I just wanted too deeply to be swept away with love for Abigail. Certainly I read the entire book with interest. But still, I want the book that was originally on my list. ( )
  greeniezona | Dec 6, 2017 |
When my grandmother passed a few years ago, I inherited some of her books (as the big reader in the family, almost by default). Among them was this one - a book that my mother had given her to read with the note you'll find at the bottom of this post.

I honestly don't know why I put up with having so many biographies in my possession. I dislike them immensely. They rarely illustrate a full life, especially when it's the life of someone who lived so long ago; we are subject to what was left behind almost incidentally as opposed to recorded, on top of which the writer - who means to interpret and illustrate that life for the reader - often leaves off the least-appetizing bits and inflates the subject's importance.

I don't deny Abigail Adams her influence. She was assuredly one of the most influential women in early American history, and she definitely suffered for it. But in Dearest Friend Lynn Withey really makes it feel as if Abigail was the only influential woman of the time, which is incorrect. And while Withey does not shy away from Abigail's personal faults, she does gloss them over by focusing so strongly on her loneliness, as if that were an excuse.

And from this book, you cannot tell that Abigail and John had any real feeling for one another. The author describes letters between the two of them and often fills space by saying that John did not write often, but still insists that the feelings were strong. In 1981, when this book was first published, this might have been acceptable. In 2016, it doesn't pass muster. I would rather have just read their letters. Instead, it was just a lot of Abigail Adams feeling sorry for herself and trying to control everyone else.

She decides to add rooms to her house, but we don't get an explanation of why. She agrees with her husband's politics (Federalist) until suddenly neither of them do, and then she starts agreeing with the Republicans - but so little is said about what was happening at the time and what could have influenced that change in her vision other than a mention of John Quincy explaining something that we never get the benefit of understanding; it reads more like an outline than a true-to-life story. It's an illustration that is neither complete nor appealing and, as a reader, it is a bit of an affront to my intelligence.

One note: in the epilogue, Withey mentions that although Abigail did not live to see it (spoiler alert?)
she was the "first and only woman ever to be both wife and mother of American Presidents." In 2001, 20 years after this book was published and 200 years since John Adams vacated the Presidency, Barbara Bush became the second. Though I very much doubt that Mrs. Bush ever had to make as many sacrifices, or was ever called on to advise, as much as Abigail was. I also very much doubt that Barbara would ever be caught hanging her laundry in the east room of the White House.

www.theliterarygothamite.com ( )
  laurscartelli | Aug 21, 2016 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 10 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
Você deve entrar para editar os dados de Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Compartilhado.
Título canônico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Lugares importantes
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Eventos importantes
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
For Michael
Primeiras palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Abigail Adams was a tiny woman, little more than five feet tall, with dark hair, piercing dark eyes, and a forceful personality that belied her size.  Quiet and reserved as a child, she nonetheless displayed a brilliant mind and fierce determination even then.
Citações
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
God willing...I must be withing the Scent of the sea. - John Adams
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive...It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. - Thomas Jefferson
Últimas palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
(Clique para mostrar. Atenção: Pode conter revelações sobre o enredo.)
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Idioma original
CDD/MDS canônico
LCC Canônico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês (1)

The lively, authoritative, New York Times bestselling biography of Abigail Adams. This is the life of Abigail Adams, wife of patriot John Adams, who became the most influential woman in Revolutionary America. Rich with excerpts from her personal letters, Dearest Friend captures the public and private sides of this fascinating woman, who was both an advocate of slave emancipation and a burgeoning feminist, urging her husband to "Remember the Ladies" as he framed the laws of their new country. John and Abigail Adams married for love. While John traveled in America and abroad to help forge a new nation, Abigail remained at home, raising four children, managing their estate, and writing letters to her beloved husband. Chronicling their remarkable fifty-four-year marriage, her blossoming feminism, her battles with loneliness, and her friendships with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Dearest Friend paints a portrait of Abigail Adams as an intelligent, resourceful, and outspoken woman.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo em haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Links rápidos

Avaliação

Média: (3.7)
0.5
1
1.5
2 4
2.5
3 19
3.5 11
4 23
4.5 1
5 11

É você?

Torne-se um autor do LibraryThing.

 

Sobre | Contato | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blog | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Históricas | Os primeiros revisores | Conhecimento Comum | 203,213,949 livros! | Barra superior: Sempre visível