Offers a portrait of the life of a remarkable American woman, profiling the seminal role played by Dolley Madison amid the turbulent and complex political, social, and cultural world of the early nineteenth century.

"John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (and it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results, and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. John and...