The First Populist

The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson

By: David S. Brown

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

A timely, “solidly researched [and] gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a fresh reexamination of this charismatic figure in the context of American populism—connecting the complex man and the politician to a longer history of division, dissent, and partisanship that has come to define our current times.

Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19th-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white men. Others stress Jackson’s prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands, which then became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people.

A combative, self-defined champion of “farmers, mechanics, and laborers,” Jackson railed against East Coast elites and Virginia aristocracy, fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the common man and helped catapult him into the presidency. “The General,” as he was known, was the first president to be born of humble origins, first orphan, and thus far the only former prisoner of war to occupy the office.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jackson’s public career, including the pivotal Battle of New Orleans (1815) and the bitterly fought Bank War; it reveals his marriage to an already married woman and a deadly duel with a Nashville dandy, and analyzes his magnetic hold on the public imagination of the country in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

“By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trump…the hope is that a fresh understanding of the divisive times of ‘the country’s original anti-establishment president’ might shed light on our own” (The Christian Science Monitor).

Evan's Review

Great book I highly recommend. If you like American History you will like the first progressive President. He strongly believed in a strong President always battling the establishment whether it was with Congress or the Supreme Court. Many President's want compare themselves to him Donald Trump as an example but there many differences because the age we live in.

A focused and enthralling look at Jasckson

this is a very well written and comprehensive biography of Jackson. perhaps no other book offers such riveting narrative with so little "extra" details. this book will tell you exactly who Jackson was, what he did, without the long-windedness of many authors

General history from a left leaning professor

The organization and writing are good. The writing a more of a general history versus how/why Andrew Jackson was a/the first populist. Author builds to the final chapter where it becomes a subtle attack on Trump like so many general histories written since 2017. Author also, in one sentence, absolved the New England succession plot at the end of the war of 1812 as nothing of the sort with no explanation. Likely so to swing the hammer on Calhoun and the 1832 nullification event. Just know you’re listening to woke going on.

Very dry writing

…with minimal context - ie why did Jackson name his house ‘hermitage’? We listened to this book on a car trip and our conversation was why there was little continuity & context ‘color’…