The Passions of Andrew Jackson

Most people vaguely imagine Andrew Jackson as a jaunty warrior and a man of the people,
but he was much more-a man just as complex and controversial as Jefferson or Lincoln.

Now, with the first major reinterpretation of his life in a generation, historian
Andrew Burstein brings back Jackson with all his audacity and hot-tempered rhetoric.

The unabashedly aggressive Jackson came of age in the Carolinas during the American
Revolution, migrating to Tennessee after he was orphaned at the age of fourteen.

Little more than a poorly educated frontier bully when he first opened his public
career, he was possessed of a controlling sense of honor that would lead him into
more than one duel. As a lover, he fled to Spanish Mississippi with his wife-to-be
before she was divorced. Yet when he was declared a national hero upon his stunning
victory at the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson suddenly found the presidency within
his grasp. How this brash frontiersman took Washington by storm makes a fascinating
story, and Burstein tells it thoughtfully and expertly. In the process he reveals
why Jackson was so fiercely loved (and fiercely hated) by the American people, and
how his presidency came to shape the young country’s character.