Mrs. Adams in Winter, Michael OBrien
Mrs. Adams in Winter, Michael OBrien
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Mrs. Adams in Winter
A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon

Author: Michael O'Brien

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 12 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/08/2010


Synopsis

Early in 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams and her young son left St. Petersburg in a heavy Russian carriage and set out on a difficult journey to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams, in Paris. She traveled through the snows of eastern Europe, down the Baltic coast to Prussia, across the battlefields of Germany, and into a France that was then experiencing the tumultuous events of Napoleon's return from Elba. Along the way, she learned what the long years of Napoleon's wars had done to Europe, what her old friends in the royal court in Berlin had experienced during the French occupation, how it felt to have her life threatened by reckless soldiers, and how to manage fear.

The journey was a metaphor for a life spent crossing borders: born in London in 1775, she had grown up partly in France, and in 1797 she had married into the most famous of American political dynasties and become the daughter-in-law of John and Abigail Adams.

The prizewinning historian Michael O'Brien reconstructs for the first time Louisa Adams's extraordinary passage. An evocative history of the experience of travel in the days of carriages and kings, Mrs. Adams in Winter offers a moving portrait of a lady, her difficult marriage, and her conflicted sense of what it meant to be a woman caught between worlds.

About Michael O'Brien

Michael O'Brien is a professor of American intellectual history at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.


Reviews

This would not be everyone's cup of tea but I found it fascinating. In the winter of 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of future President John Quincey Adams left ST Petersburg with her 7 year old son to travel by coach to Paris, nearly 2000 miles away across a Europe torn and dangerous from th......more

Goodreads review by Judy

I think that Louisa Catherine Adams is one of the most interesting First Ladies in American history--and I also think that her husband, John Quincy Adams, while right on so many issues, could be a bit of a prig. This book details Louisa's journey of almost 2,000 mils from St. Petersburg, Russia to P......more

Goodreads review by Tiffany

I recognize that my women's studies background makes me approach all books by men, about women, with some suspicion but I am working on being more open-minded. So when I read that Louisa's sister "got herself pregnant" I simply rolled my eyes and kept reading. But when yet another young woman in the......more

Goodreads review by Linore

A strongly researched book, the author excels when he tracks the journey of Mrs. Adams, giving lovely details of terrain, landmarks, and the political climate surrounding her as she lumbered through Europe by coach. I think the personal interpretations are somewhat less successful, as one quote the......more

Louisa Catherine Adams was born in London in 1775, though she did a lot of growing up in France. In 1797, she married John Quincy Adams. (She would go on to become First Lady of the United States of America from 1825 to 1829.) This book chronicles her trip from St. Petersburg to Paris with her son.......more