Adams published a pioneering English-language history of Jewish people from the destruction of Jerusalem to her present day.
In 1812, Hannah Adams published "The History of the Jews, From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Present Time" in Boston, a two-volume work tracing post-Second-Temple Jewish history through the diaspora into the early nineteenth century. It stands among the earliest English-language histories of the Jewish people written by a non-Jewish author with an explicitly sympathetic and scholarly intent.
Unlike much Christian writing of the period, which treated Jewish history primarily as a prelude or counterpoint to Christian theology, Adams approached her subject with unusual respect and curiosity, corresponding with Jewish contacts in the United States and abroad to ensure accuracy. Her work has since been recognized by scholars, including entries in the Jewish Encyclopedia, as an important early attempt at objective Jewish historiography by an American writer.
The book solidified Adams's reputation as a serious historian capable of tackling complex, sensitive religious and cultural subject matter. It also reflected her broader project across her career: to catalog and explain religious diversity to an American public with fairness and rigor, at a time when such balanced treatment of minority faiths was rare in popular publishing.