Point of View

John Adams is written in the third person as befits a work of historical biography. There are frequent inline quotations of letters to and from John and Abigail Adams and a few extended quotations from letters, speeches, writings and documents, but these are if anything underplayed.

Setting

John Adams is set in the various locales inhabited or visited by the most-traveled member of the Revolutionary generation. Much of the action takes place in Braintree, Massachusetts (later renamed Quincy), where John Adams was born and lived his married life whenever not called elsewhere by duty. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Paris, London and the chief cities of Holland saw Adams' footsteps, most often in the grandest public buildings and residences those towns and cities had to offer - in stark contrast to quaint, pastoral Quincy. The biography covers the years of Adams' earthly life, 1765-1813, with the briefest...