Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Historian Brands, author of the bestselling The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, now turns to Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), illuminating both the mettle of a fascinating leader and the crucible in which American democracy was forged. A military hero during the War of 1812 and winner of the popular presidential vote in 1824 (he lost the election in Congress), Jackson won the office handily in 1828. Brands argues that the populist Jackson changed the very nature of the presidency, vetoing more bills than all six of his predecessors combined; thwarting the bank of the United States; and in a dramatic test of wills, preparing for civil war when South Carolina threatened to secede over tariffs. He died at the age of 78, just days after learning that Texas would join the union. Although Brands lacks the narrative flair of David McCullough, his effort is intensely engaging. He meticulously renders Jackson's life, his ugly massacres of Indians as well as his triumphs, with unflinching detail. He also conveys the vagaries of war, life on the frontier, the perilous state of the union and the brass-knuckles politics of the day. The result is a bracing, human portrait of both a remarkable man and of American democracy as it was transformed from a "government of the people" into a "government by the people."
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From The Washington Post

Andrew Jackson may be the most important American not yet exhumed in the rush to learn from the leading lights of our early history. If so, it makes sense that H.W. Brands is leading the charge toward his rediscovery. For one thing, Brands teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, in a state that might well be an independent republic if not for Jackson. For another, over the past decade Brands has proven himself a bloodhound with a nose for tracking down subjects ahead of the pack. There have been at least five biographies of Benjamin Franklin since he wrote his pathbreaking study, The First American, and his study of Theodore Roosevelt also coincided with a spurt in that cottage industry. In addition to presidents, Brands covers foreign policy, politics and the history of Texas -- an area of expertise nearly as broad as his home state.

He has yet again sniffed out a fine topic. Jackson, after all, occupies a peculiar place in the Hall of Dead Presidents. We see him every day on the $20 bill and hear of him in the overused phrase "Jacksonian democracy," but we do not know him nearly as well as we do most of his predecessors or the great president who learned from him, Abraham Lincoln. There is no Jackson Memorial -- only an equestrian statue facing the White House, somewhat menacingly. He has no disciples in Congress. Neither of the two major cities named after him, Jackson and Jacksonville, is in his home state of Tennessee. His most audible legacy in the modern era may be the great Johnny Cash and June Carter song "Jackson," a spirited ode to divorce ("We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout/ We've been talkin' 'bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out").

If the fire has gone out for the seventh president, it is not hard to venture a few reasons. With his bloodstained résumé, Jackson fits awkwardly alongside our prim modern sensibilities. It is not difficult to condemn him before the bar of public opinion, especially academic opinion: He was a slave-owner, a brutal slayer of Native Americans and an unapologetic expansionist. His violent temper still frightens away the type of person often drawn to the historical profession.

And yet to leave it at that is far too simplistic an approach to this primordial ancestor. It is not simply that Jackson's impact on American history was enormous; he was our greatest soldier after Washington, he vastly strengthened the executive branch, and he forcefully represented ordinary Americans who had not enjoyed much clout in Washington until his arrival. Even beyond that, he is simply in America's DNA. We see him everywhere, from the stony glare of Clint Eastwood to the tenacity of Lance Armstrong to the NFL coaches who scream that victory is only a matter of willpower. Americans as different as John McCain and Martin Luther King Jr. may be said to have inherited something from this paragon of self-discipline.

Brands does not quite go as far as I just did, but this is nonetheless a most sympathetic portrait. (Fortunately, Brands has tenure.) From the start of the story, he writes in the hagiographic voice that biographies of great Americans used to be written in. And frankly, it's a great story, from Jackson's poverty and early scrapes with mortality to his violent encounters with British soldiers when he was a mere stripling to his impressive rise as a Tennessee politician, soldier and statesman. Brands is drawn toward the dramatic and serves up everything you might expect in a ripping yarn: murderous duels, savage Indian raids, equally savage counterattacks and a lot of detail about Jackson's scorched-earth campaigns in Louisiana and Florida. His gripping account of the battle of New Orleans, perhaps the greatest American victory ever, reveals Jackson as a defender of that city before whom even Hurricane Katrina might have trembled. Brands also has an eye for the arresting detail -- for example, Jackson's decision to adopt "a little Indian boy" after an especially violent campaign that had exterminated the child's tribe, or the fact that 200 black Haitians were fighting alongside the Americans at New Orleans.

The heavy focus on blood and guts comes at a price, however. Brands's treatment of Old Hickory's political career is comparatively thin. Jackson doesn't assume the presidency until page 386, three-quarters of the way through the book, and the treatment of the great struggles of that era feels rushed. That's a shame, for Jackson's presidential achievement was more significant than his military career and set a crucial precedent for Lincoln and both Roosevelts. For a more subtle reading of Jackson as a political thinker ahead of his time, readers will have to consult Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Age of Jackson -- still electrifying 60 years after its appearance in 1945.

Even though most readers will enjoy the nonacademic tone of Andrew Jackson, Brands would have deepened the book with a more detailed discussion of the crucial issue of slavery. A few perfunctory references to Jackson's slave-owning practices are not quite enough in an age when we have become very sophisticated at studying the peculiar institution. Henry Wiencek's excellent recent book on George Washington as a slave-owner, An Imperfect God, set a high standard, neither excoriating Washington nor quite letting him off the hook. Jackson's importance demands a similar level of unflinching scrutiny.

Princeton's Sean Wilentz is about to release a short biography, and it would be good for America if these two books jumpstarted a new level of enlightened interest in Old Hickory. While reading this book, an academic friend criticized me for admiring Jackson, arguing that one can trace the militaristic tendencies of the current administration back to the seventh president. It is certainly true that the twin foundations of the Bush empire -- Florida and Texas -- are American because of Jackson's intervention. But I disagreed with the parallel, pointing out that Jackson's contempt for plutocrats, lobbyists and evangelicals would clearly make him persona non grata in today's Washington. It's an unfinished conversation -- exactly what history should be. One hopes that this book will inspire many more about an essential American who contributed as much as any founder to the national epic.

Reviewed by Ted Widmer
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition, 1st Printing edition (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385507380
• ISBN-13: 978-0385507387
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #136,101 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old Hickory: A Study of Combustible Love in Tough Times, October 24, 2005

By	Gregory Maier (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

H.W. Brands takes on an "American original" for the first time since his seminal, single-volume biography of Benjamin Franklin, and does a very good job with his subject. The author presents, in under 600 pages, all the most important facets of "the People's President" and his devotion which not only preserved the Union, but made democracy flourish in an uncertain, turbulent time.

Andrew Jackson was devoted to many things for many reasons, and Brands shows us why, even if at times this man of the people seems a contradiction. The writing is precise and clear, though hardly the flowing prose of McCullough or Ellis (as has been remarked); yet it is the precision, craft and careful presentation employed by Brands that make this largely successful single-volume work shine. And if some may find the prose a little dry in places, the author more than compensates by interweaving a rich background tapestry for readers in every chapter, presenting a clear, historical context for observations about Jackson's character formation, mentality, psychology, military strategy, attitudes, decisions, and political development.

With surprising efficiency and admirable attention to detail, Brands brings the life of Andrew Jackson into intense focus, particularly at crucial moments like his difficult childhood and the gradual loss of his family during the Revolutionary War (Jackson's father died shortly before his namesake son was born); the privations, tribulations, humiliation, injury, loss, and intense insecurity of the seventh president's boyhood cannot be overstated. Andrew Jackson's time in the expanding Western frontier and his rise from a local popular politician to soldier; his persecution of Native Americans in the name of national security; the War of 1812; the road to the presidency and beyond: It's all here, along with important insights into Jackson's personal life, including his abiding love for his wife, his passion for horses, his near inability to govern his passions and almost suicidal emotionalism; the tender foster parent, remorseless warrior, and every other important aspect of the psychology of a man alternately thin-skinned and thick-skinned, devoted unto death by some turns and completely lacking in self-effacement by others.

Some readers may come away appalled by Andrew Jackson, his warts especially unattractive and unappealing in hindsight, but perhaps they will nonetheless appreciate the man who was devoted to serving his country -the infant United States of America- and moreover, was willing to sacrifice everything, from his own wife to the lives of others, to secure the Union he so loved. It is a testament that such a rude, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing, honor-obsessed madman had the fortitude and character to carry forth his convictions which, Brands shows us, preserved the Union in its darkest hours, in both war and peace: Jackson prevented the dissolution of America almost as much by pure will as political acumen, and a strange love, an abiding devotion that was indeed as tough as hickory.

Whether one comes to respect or despise "Old Hickory," one could do worse for a single-volume treatment of the man's life, and while brisk and more businesslike than "The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin," and not quite as compelling, it's arguably the finest contribution to literature on Jackson in nearly two decades, and more portable than Robert Remini's daunting three-volume definitive biography, which was recently condensed into a single volume. While Remini's one-volume distillation is a good book, Brands' work may be judged as good, if not a cut above.

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The First President From The West, October 9, 2005

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Andrew Jackson led a colorful and complex life in his 78 years. He was a military genius, plantation owner, Indian fighter, a racist toward non-whites, controversial loser of the 1824 and easy winner of the 1828 & 1832 Presidential elections, orphan, scarred by the British and married to a married woman, his true love. Mr. Brands tells his story of a man of contradictions in 600+ pages.

Mr. Brands writes a dense, just the facts approach in his biography of this populist President from the West who campaigned against the elitist Northeast. The true climax of his Presidency was his delaying the onset of the Civil War with his staring down his own Vice-President and the South with a genuine military show of force during the secession crisis.

Mr. Brands has written the best one volume biography of the seventh President, surpasssing Robert Remini's own 400+ page condensation ("The Life of Andrew Jackson"--1988) of his classic trilogy on Andrew Jackson. However, given that Jackson was at the center of American history for over 60 years, the reader is referred to Mr. Remini's three volume definitive biography of 1,600 pages (1977, 1981, 1984) for a fuller, richer picture of this fascinating President. In deciding which to read, it depends on how much time and how much interest the reader has in Andrew Jackson.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid one-volume history of one of our most colorful and important presidents, November 18, 2005

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

For all his prominence among American presidents, Andrew Jackson has been the subject of fewer major biographies than one might assume. There is, of course, the masterful three-volume biography by Remini, which is and will remain for some time the major biography of Jackson, as well as the classic single volume by Arthur Schlesinger THE AGE OF JACKSON, a very great book even though Jackson emerges as more or less a proto 1930s New Dealer. This excellent new biography by H. W. Brands, who among his many interesting books wrote a stellar biography of Benjamin Franklin, does not supplant either of these books, but rather supplements them. While Remini's remains the for-now definitive biography of Jackson, those not willing or possessing the time to work through his three-volume work can feel easy about turning to this single-volume biography. I should note that Remini has produced a one-wolume condensation of his longer work, but I must confess an inherent bias against abridgements, even if performed by the author himself.

Of all the American presidents, Andrew Jackson lived the fullest, most colorful life. Only Teddy Roosevelt can come close for the variety of his life's experiences and even he falls far short of all that Jackson managed to do or be in his life. Jackson was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, briefly a school teacher, a lawyer, a judge, a U.S. Representative to Congress, a U.S. Senator, a circuit judge, a duelist, a gambler, a slave owner and trader, a dry goods salesman, a farmer, a landowner, a major general in the state militia, an Indian fighter, and a general in the U.S. Army, all before achieving national fame at the Battle of New Orleans. One could argue that Jackson is not as interesting as some more physically sedate but more psychologically complex presidents such as John Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, or the two Roosevelts, but none of these others can match Jackson for the sheer pace at which he got things done.

Brands does a great job at highlighting the more interesting aspects of Jackson's life. Given the amazing variety of his life's experiences, this is perhaps not that great of an achievement. He does in addition a fine job of bringing Jackson the person into focus, with his almost savage pride and propensity to take offense. "Thin-skinned" does not seem to describe Jackson as well as "no-skinned" might. Other political figures in American history fought duels, but none with such aggression. He was the only president to have killed a man in a duel. Jackson emerges as a vibrant, fascinating, and compelling character, if not someone you especially like. Brands is also good at placing Jackson in his time, which was the point in the nation's history when the Federalists and the Republicans (the Federalists later fragmented and the remnants became the Republican party while the Republicans later called themselves during the Jacksonian period Democrats) were contending over whether the new nation would be a representative republic in which the elite in the nation would provide the major voice in selecting the nation's leaders and determining its policies or whether a popular democracy rooted in the people would. The great advocate of popular democracy was, of course, Thomas Jefferson, but as Brands points out, he was himself very much an aristocrat. Jackson not only shared Jefferson's passion for a popular democracy but was also very much a man of the people and one of the most important aspects of his presidency was that he was the first president to derive from the people with the support of the people, instead of an aristocrat nominated through caucuses among political leaders. The placing of the presidency in the hands of the people was one of Jackson's greatest achievements.

Nearly as important as the promotion of what came to be known as Jacksonian Democracy was Jackson's expansion of the powers of the presidency. This is the weakest part of the book. Under Jackson the presidency acquired powers completely beyond anything seen before. Brands doesn't ignore this fact, but he doesn't stress it explicitly as much as he could or should have. Although he writes extensively on the banking issue, he doesn't draw out all of the implications that this would have for the presidency. Indeed, Jackson is unquestionably one of the two or three most important presidents in defining the powers of the executive branch.

One of the things that fascinates anyone who reads much about Jackson is his strong states' rights stance on nearly every issue on the one hand coupled with his his passionate embrace of the union. For instance, if Jackson had been president in late 1860 instead of James Buchanan, he would unquestionably have invaded South Carolina in the early days of their secession and crushed the rebellion despite the probability that he would have sided with the South on every issue except the right to secede. Brands makes no more sense of this than any other biographer, but he does a superb job of making the reader feel how passionately Jackson felt about national unity. In the Nullification Crisis he made it crystal clear that he regarded nullification or secession as an impossibility and would use the military against South Carolina if it attempted to undertake either. Brands does not explain why Jackson felt so passionately on this issue, but he makes clear his passion on the issue.

There are two other things I like about Brands's biography. One is that it is hard to detect any signs of partisanship. Sometimes--though not as often as the detectors of "bias" would have it--biographers write a biography with an axe to grind. If Brands has an axe, he has hidden it well. Also, while not ignoring Jackson's faults, he takes the justifiable stance that while many of his positions would be lamentable today, they were often standard at the time. For instance, Jackson's views on both Native Americans and slavery were not especially enlightened (though he armed freed blacks in the defense of New Orleans, a step that few Southerners in the Civil War were willing to undertake), and his role in the relocation of Native Americans is lamentable and not mitigated by the undeniable fact that their relocation was probably inevitable. At the same time, Brands does not try to excuse Jackson's many moral faults, his intense temper, his misplaced pride, his irascibility, his aggressiveness. He was under no circumstances a great moral exemplar.

In short, this is a very good single volume biography of one of our most important and interesting presidents. In presidential scholars' polls Jackson is frequently rated as a "Near Great" president and inhabits that rung of presidential greatness just below Washington, Lincoln, and FDR and beside other "Near Great" presidents such as Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt. By any standard Jackson remains one of the most important presidents for anyone interested in American history to know something about. Furthermore, since Jackson's military and public career extended from the American Revolution until just short of mid-19th century, to study Jackson is literally to study the history of the republic's first half decade.