That absence suggests that although Jackson repeatedly claimed to have the support of the American public, the limits of travel and communication constrained how well he really knew the people’s will. The book rarely turns to life outside Washington, and provides little indication, beyond Jackson’s two successful elections, of how closely his actions matched the values of his time. The people, for all their centrality to Jackson’s administration, are also the most notable omission in Mr. The Eaton affair is certainly dramatic, and not without historical implications, but I found the discussion of the weighty issues Jackson tackled in his second term to be more satisfying reading in light of the serious challenges we’re facing in our own time. The second half of American Lion is for my money the more engrossing. Meacham’s telling is both a champion of the people and a political operator before his time. If you have the faintest of red, white, and blue in your blood then this book should be on your must-read list-not your I’d-like-to-read-it-someday list. Not merely an account of birth-to-grave, but more precisely a human study of how Jackson handled events surrounding him within the scope of his very humanity and his own stubborn definition of presidential rectitude. wonderfully readable and realistic voice.

Indeed it is an entertaining and educational biography of the man, not of a cog in the governmental machine. Meacham gives us a genuinely engaging, intimate, and balanced account of Jackson’s personal gravitas and how nimbly he used it to perpetuate his steadfast belief in the will of the people.

The major difference is that it all happened, and needed to do so in the hands of Jackson-and skillfully rendered by the pen of Mr. Personal and political are presented in such style and illuminating narrative as to present us with an entirely human imposition of a man who was only too often underestimated by his detractors and dearly loved by those he represented, in his words, with 'the feelings of a father.' Meacham has taken the arduous task of collating such a vast volume of information and turned it into a biography which in many, many respects reads as a novel.

American lion andrew jackson