Andrew Jackson --Great Generals Series by Robert V. Remini, foreword by Series Editor Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Palgrave MacMillan '09, $21.95, 204 pages, ISBN #0945707347. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.
Thanks to such presidential biographies as Jon Meacham's recent excellent work, literary focus on Andrew Jackson has largely honed in on his life as a politician and office-holder. But, as Robert V. Remini writes in his slim, new biography, his military career was in some ways just as relevant to today's world.
As a general, for example, Jackson made extensive use of spies in wartime and of martial law in peacetime, stoking the fires of those who decried the restriction of civil liberties in the name of national security, a hot political issue then and now.
Robert V. Remini is offical historian of the House of Representatives and won the National Book Award for the third volume of his biography of Andrew Jackson. He has also authored biographies of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.
