John AdamsâEUR(TM)s Diary, partially published in the 1850s, has proved a quarry of information on the rise of Revolutionary resistance in New England, the debates in the early Continental Congresses, and the diplomacy and financing of the American Revolution, but it has remained unfamiliar to the wider public. âEURœIt is an American classic, âEUR? Zoltán Haraszti said recently, âEURœabout which Americans know next to nothing.âEUR? Yet the DiaryâEUR(TM)s historical value may well prove secondary to its literary and human interest. Now that it is presented in full, we have for the first time a proper basis for comprehending John AdamsâEUR"an extraordinary human being, a master of robust, idiomatic language, a diarist in the great tradition. The Autobiography, intended for John AdamsâEUR(TM)s family, consists of three large sections. The first records his boyhood, his legal and political career, and the movement that culminated in American independence. The second and third parts deal with his diplomatic experiences, and serve among other things as a retrospective commentary on the Diary, they are studded with sketches of AdamsâEUR(TM) associates, which are as scintillating as they are prejudiced, parts and in some cases all of which were omitted from Charles Francis AdamsâEUR(TM)s nineteenth-century edition.