Andrew Jackson, his life and times / H.W. Brands.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [597]-607) and index.

Brands (history, Univ. of Texas, Austin; The Age of Gold) displays his masterly storytelling skills with this thoughtful, frank, and readable biography of a complex individual possessed of many strengths and faults. Brands sees Jackson's greatness as his unshakeable loyalty to the American republic: "His times contributed to the way he turned out. If he defined life as a struggle, it was largely because life for America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a struggle." Using primary sources, Brands covers familiar ground in a candid though not revisionist approach to Jackson's Scots-Irish heritage, elopement with Rachel Robards, military campaigns against Native Americans and the British, and presidency. He also probes Jackson's views on core issues such as slavery and westward expansion. His book differs from Robert Remini's Andrew Jackson and Andrew Burstein's The Passions of Andrew Jackson, among others, by emphasizing Jackson's deep faith in democracy, pointing out the parallels between Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, "who articulated the Jacksonian creed best-better than Jackson himself."