Book Alert / Waking Giant

Waking Giant -- America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds, Harper '08, $29.95, 466 pages, ISBN #0060826568. Index, selected sources and readings, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

In support of his thesis that the Jacksonian era was the richest period in American history, City University of New York historian David S. Reynolds delves into "cults, sects, prophets, reform movement, nostrums, fads, art works, Barnum's freaks, minstrel shows and compelling writings of Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne and others."

Recounting other historical eras is useful in putting our own in perspective. We've just finished a presidential campaign which some believe to be unusually negative and others feel was just par for the course. In a brief Q&A, Reynolds speaks to a campaign of old:

Q. Negative campaigning in the nineteenth century: Are things more or less civilized today?

A. (Referring to the 1828 Jackson vs. Adams race), Adams' supporters concocted stories that portrayed Jackson as a murderer, an adulterer, and (most imaginative of all) the illegitimate son of a prostitute and a mulatto man. Jackson's backers invented a tale that had Adams serving as a pimp for Czar Alexander during his term as minister to Russia. Although nothing quite so scandalous has yet emerged in this year's political fight, the potential for negative campaigning is always there, as evidenced, for instance, by conservatives' recent efforts to tarnish Obama by stressing his association with radical religious figures like Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger."