[ 82 ] BOOK REVIEWS service in the Continental Congress, the Braintree government, and the Provincial Congress is documented here; but it is the private correspondence that reveals and dramatizes the tensions of the year. Caught between the urgent and radical demands of his own colony and the insistence on moderation and caution by the Congress at Philadelphia, Adams suffers an empathy with both positions. As the editors point out in their excellent • headnotes to the congressional materials, Adams worked at educating his fellow delegates in the realities of military occupation, political disruption, and the loss of trade, but he worked equally hard counseling his friends at home to be patient and discreet. "But at this Distance from you" he wrote William Tudor, "We who come from you can scarcely form an Adequate Idea of your State—much less can Strangers, to whom Words and Descriptions can convey but very Imperfect Notions!' It must have been a relief for Adams to turn his back on the problems of daily politics and return to the more certain ground of political theory. Almost half of Volume II is devoted to that learned, but tedious legal brief for colonial independence from Parliament, the Novanglus letters of January-April 1775. The editors print the twelve letters to the Boston Gazette, as they appeared in that newspaper, with only some necessary punctuation adjustments. In addition, they print a thirteenth essay, never published, that is a composite of a draft by Adams and two copies made by Adams' contemporary Judge William Cushing. The difference between this and the Charles Francis Adams edition of the twelve essays is not one of content but of preservation of the integrity of eighteenth-century style; in itself, the difference may not justify re-publication. However, the legitimate concern of the , editors is to present materials central to our understanding of John Adams' contribution to the politics and political theory of his era. Such a consideration seems, to this reader, more valid than an over-preoccupation with printing any material as long as it has not been previously published. These two volumes are an auspicious beginning to the series on Adams' public papers and nonfamily correspondence. To some extent, the editors began with advantages. First, in John Adams they have a man whose personal energy enlivens even the driest document. Second, the Adams papers are completely microfilmed; thus, the almost moral difficulties other project editors face when forced to be selective rather than inclusive are not suffered here. Nevertheless, the editors have enhanced all natural advantages by intelligent editorial policy. The decision to publish drafts, any extant research notes, and the final version of the document gives the material a dynamic quality, a history of its own so to speak. And, the editors have made their own contribution more singular by exposing the reader to the process of annotation research. In several important notes they have detailed the investigation of the document, explaining what problems it posed, how the editors proposed to solve them, and what success ensued. The tone here is