INDEPENDENCE FOREVER

John Adams' biography is the latest addition to this writing teams's last of well-worked life histories that has lately included those of Roger Williams and Daniel Webster. As before, the authors strive with success to ground their characters in milieu and in the historical events which governed their lives and which they did much to create. It is a sharp picture then, that we get of Adams' Braintree boyhood, early British loyalty and how it was affected by an experience with a press gang; Harvard and intellectual maturity, marriage to Abigail and the law practice that fed a growing though not a blind loyalty to the colonies. His part in the Boston Massacre trial is strongly portrayed and throughout the political career that followed, the strength is carried on, making a many sided account. Recommended reading.