From Publishers Weekly
This book will not endear its subject to readers, even if the author is correct in the claim that he's made Jackson more "knowable." Burstein (Sentimental Democracy; America's Jubilee) writes fluidly and argues energetically. But that can't overcome the fact that, in his hands, the seventh president turns out to be an implacable, humorless, self-righteous, rage-filled zealot (all Burstein's words). Nor will the book make us think well of a man who, in the author's view, always acted on the margins of the law, constantly broke friendships, took politics as a means of righting personal wrongs and governed by letting loose fears. Burstein hopes that his work will counterbalance that of the many historians who have "missed" Jackson's true "character and impulses" because of the dazzling halo of his reputation as a great democrat. Acknowledging that the hero of New Orleans was a "significant" if "avenging" president, he also judges the Tennessean to have been "a man of platitudes, a mediocre intellect with a glamorous surface appeal" and a democrat for white men only. While tattering Jackson's repute more successfully than most of the president's 19th-century enemies, Burstein succeeds at two other things. Showing how Jackson strove to preserve the moral order that he knew, he makes Jackson something of a conservative. The author also clears up long uncertain facts about Jackson's marriage to Rachel Donelson. But it's not for the solution to scholarly puzzles that this book will be noted, nor for its spirited, sometimes convincing arguments, nor for Burstein's strained effort to make Jackson a tragic figure in the Shakespearean mold. Instead, it will win readers by stirring up controversy. 17 illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
Andrew Jackson remains one of our most fascinating and frustratingly enigmatic presidents. He was the first president from the trans-Appalachian region and the first to come from humble origins. He had a passionate determination to represent the "common man," and he undoubtedly advanced the democratic transformation of our nation. Yet, by background and temperament, he was an unlikely Democrat. Subject to awesome rages that frequently exploded into physical violence, he often displayed contempt for those who lacked his physical strength, and his disdain for Native Americans and African Americans was extreme even by frontier standards. Burstein, a professor of history at the University of Tulsa, has written an excellent personality study that examines Jackson's ideas, loves, and hatreds without indulging in psychobabble or engaging in unwarranted speculations. He views Jackson's personal and political development within the context of his family background, upbringing, and the political culture of the newly settled West. This is a solid work of historical inquiry that adds to our knowledge about one of our national icons. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
