BOOKS: Andrew Jackson: His Life & Times: H.W. Brands

Jan. 1—Prolific historian H.W. Brands opens "Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times" with a prologue focused on the 1828 election where Jackson defeated sitting President John Quincy Adams.

The victory was a sea change in the presidency and the nation.

Adams was the sixth president at a point when the American presidency was the bastion of a succession of Virginia aristocracy and another Massachusetts man — John Adams, who was John Quincy Adams' father.

With the election of Jackson, a man who grew up impoverished and orphaned, who was self-made in his personal, political and military successes, was known to duel and engage in spats with people, who was considered a man of the people, who often ignored policies and went his own way as a military general, was elected to the presidency in what was, until recently, considered one of the most tumultuous elections in American history.

The election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency shattered what had become known as the system of the politically elite in the early 19th century.

As for the book, Brands' title lives up to its promise. His "Andrew Jackson" provides an overview of Jackson's life in its entirety. Readers meet the boy revolutionary of American independence, the young man dueling his way into politics, the general of the Battle of New Orleans, the cantankerous president and beyond.

Brands knows what he's doing with political biographies. He's also written biographies on Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Ulysses S. Grant, etc. Brands' "The General vs. the President" is a book on the relationship between Gen. Douglas MacArthur and President Harry S Truman.

Brands' "Andrew Jackson" is worth finding.