and it seemed appropriate, then, to write a book about the adams es, and there has been no prior biography of abigail and john and there were wonderful biographies about john and nice ones about abigail and none about the marriage so i decided to write about the two of them in tandem. and my interest in abigail goes back 30 years to the beginning of the women's movement. and at that time, i am trained as a colonial historian. i did pure tans and the entire 17th and 18th century and then, i -- this women's movement came along, and i was teaching in southern california, and i didn't know how to do women's history. there were very few books, if you went to a bookstore, 30 years ago, and looked for a shelf on women's books there were very few of them. the only way i could think to do women's history was to writes a biography of a woman and i looked through the -- who were the possible well-known women in that era, there was ann brad street but she was a poet and i don't do poetry. there was merciodis warren, who wrote the first history of the american revolution but i didn't -- she left very f