Succinct, engaging portrait of Jackson, his circle and his influence.
Newsweek editor Meacham makes a solid case that the war-hero president was largely responsible for expanding the power of the executive branch.
The fiercely independent Jackson was a tough customer, to be sure, and never one to back down from a fight. He challenged at least 13 men to duels during his lifetime, killing one of them, and he attacked his political enemies with equal fervor. During his presidency (1829–1837), he waged a crusade against the national bank, which he felt wielded too much power, and promised military action against South Carolina when the state threatened secession over federal tariffs. More than any chief executive before him, Jackson went out of his way to assert his presidential authority, all the while crafting a public image as a valiant defender of the people against the powerful. As a result, he often clashed with members of his own cabinet, including Vice President John C. Calhoun. Five cabinet members were replaced during Jackson’s first term alone, and Meacham ably portrays the aggressive behind-the-scenes politicking and power plays. Though the author is clearly captivated by his subject’s drive and ambition, he avoids hagiography, and is clear-eyed about Jackson’s flaws. He particularly condemns the president’s unwavering support for the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans, which led to the infamous Trail of Tears. Meacham dwells a bit too much on Jackson’s rather ordinary views on religion, perhaps because his previous book, American Gospel (2006, etc.), focused almost exclusively on how religion influenced the Founding Fathers. Those occasional lapses aside, he provides a surprisingly detailed portrait of a complicated president, especially considering that this fast-moving text is aimed at the casual reader.
Succinct, engaging portrait of Jackson, his circle and his influence.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6325-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
