Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family

New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Hard Back. Near Fine/As New. 6" x 9. Red board with black taped quarter-spine. This unopened book is in the original plastic covering. It probably is a Book Club edition with 400 pages. Edition and printing are unknown. Here iare the private lives behind the public image. This book, filled with quotations from letters and diaries reveals the Adamses as flesh-and-blood individuals struggling with powerful ambitions thay consideered unseemly, afflicted with personalities often harsh and compulsive. This book covers the descendants of John and Abigail Adams from 1735 to 1927. John Quincy once wrote I am a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding mannters and I have not the pliability to reform it. Henry Adams wrote to Brooks Adams The likelihood is great that I inherited some of the old man's nature because I loathe it so heartily. John Adams to John Quincy -- You come into life with advantages which will disgrace you if you r success is mediocre. And if you not rise to the head not only your Profession, bfut of your countyr, it will be owing to your own Laziness, Slovenliness and Obstiinacy. Here in this book are the sinful, the misfits, spendthrifts, and the neurotics.