Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

John Adams 1784
Paris

This is an ownership inscription—a common 18th-century practice where a book buyer would record their name, the date, and the place of acquisition. In 1784, John Adams was in Paris acting as a "minister plenipotentiary," a high-ranking diplomat working with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to negotiate trade treaties for the newly independent United States. His time in Europe allowed him to amass a significant personal library of over 3,000 volumes.