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Book Reviews
While I single-handedly can't save the world from the downward spiral of social media content, I can try to make my social media followers' experience a little more pleasant by virtually opening up my personal library to them. My hope is by sharing what I am reading, I may inspire other to read books-- any books. Picking up a physical book provides a much-needed break from the constant strain on our eyes, brains, and emotions. I also make it a point to share books I have bought at local libraries or my favorite book selling app, Thriftbooks.
I started doing this around 2018 on Twitter, and then moved it over to Facebook after I sunset my Twitter account in 2022. With Facebook reducing fact-checking beginning in 2025, I will be sharing more here on my website.
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I have long been a proponent of reading and studying history, not only because it interests me, but also because you can learn so much about today and have a window into tomorrow by looking at the past. One of my favorite sayings is, "History doesn't repeat, but it does have a fat backbeat". I've found that to be true more often than not. My recent Thriftbooks purchases, which I'll be reading and reviewing over the next several months, have been heavily focused on the run-up to the U.S. Civil War, the end of Reconstruction, and the demise of democratic societal norms in a battle of elites and non-elites.
I'm sure it's all a coincidence given current events.
But to be honest I bought this book in September or October, and I had my eye on it for a while as I learned about it when author and NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep was promoting a more recent book Imperfect Union (which I will also be reading and reviewing soon). I figured now was a good time to read this, as Andrew Jackson was arguably the first populist president who still has his fans and followers two centuries after he was in office.
So what does Andrew Jackson have to do with American politics today? Consider:
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He was a man who was easily the first political leader to not come from politics. While he shares a similar background as George Washington in earning much of his fame from the battlefield, Jackson was not an "originalist" politician like the previous presidents were. He was very much the first "outsider" to become a president.
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He was filled with vengeance from a closely contested presidential election, as he felt (and it could be argued he was correct in thinking) that the 1824 electoral win for John Quincy Adams was stolen by a contingency election engineered by his rival Henry Clay. He rode that "stolen" election claim to victory in 1828 and re-election in 1832.
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He was a grifter, as Inskeep points out he deftly managed to take control of former indigenous land near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and sold it to land speculators who were helping the country grow out to the west.
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He hated government infrastructure, most notably the central federal bank. If there was the alphabet soup of federal programs in the 1820s like there is today, he would very likely try to break them up.
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He forcibly removed people seen as "foreigners", the native Americans (referred to as "Indians" in the book) who many Americans felt were just as problematic as Black slaves. These people were hardly seen as people, and the population generally felt that the Indians were not equals and thus needed to be swept away elsewhere.
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He defied the law, including the rather infamous alleged declaration that the Supreme Court made a decision, so the court would have to enforce it.
Sound familiar?
Inskeep does a great job documenting not only Jackson's moves, but also the parallel moves of John Ross, the chief of the Cherokee Nation at the time of Jackson's presidency. At the heart of the two men's battles, was land. The white Americans needed more of it, as the nation's Manifest Destiny demanded westward expansion. The Cherokees, settled in much of northern Georgia and the Carolinas in the Appalachian mountains, were looking to keep the land they had cultivated while not getting swept up in the forced westward movement of other tribes during the prevalent Indian Removal acts of the time. Ross had the best of intentions, but often made tactical errors that played into Jackson's (and the nation's as a whole) hands, ultimately leading to the botched Trail of Tears from Appalachia to land west of the Mississippi River. After following both Jackson's and Ross' paths, Inskeep concludes the book with a note that the Indians are still very much here despite Jackson's cruelty and efforts. The natives are very much still here, but so are other telltale signs of what was happening 200 years ago that haven't totally vanished from the environment.
The best example is the recent musing of whether someone in the government can and should defy a federal court order. The comparison to Jackson reportedly saying the Supreme Court could go enforce their ruling dates back to an 1832 case (Worcester vs. Georgia) where the state imprisoned white missionaries who were influential with the Cherokees for occupying Cherokee land. It's not that the rogue crew of "guardsmen" cared about protecting Cherokee land, but rather that the land remain "owned" by the Cherokess until the federal government eventually forced them out, leaving the cultivated land for white squatters to move in on. The case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court after Chief Justice John Marshall personally reached out to the defense's lawyer (sound familiar?) with guidance on how to bring a case to the court for a ruling. Marshall ruled that only the federal government, not an individual state, could negotiate or enforce land agreements with tribes.
Inskeep notes that there is no record of Jackson actually saying the exact words many people today are connecting him to, although there is plenty of evidence Jackson said similar thoughts to other people while clearly feeling the Court could go enforce its ruling if it so desired. Jackson was busy winning re-election in 1832, and by January 1833 he and the state of Georgia slow-walked the verdict long enough to where the newly-elected governor of Georgia released the missionaries without Jackson or the state needing to take any action to enforce or deny the ruling. As much as Jackson despised any oversight of the executive branch, even he knew that defying the ruling would be cataclysmic for the nation. He was also nuanced enough to pick his fights, as this brush-up in Georgia would pale in comparison to the nullification attempts ongoing in neighboring South Carolina. And there's the little detail that imprisoning innocent American citizens who may be blocking a lucrative land grab while removing the previous inhabitants was just incredibly cruel and clearly unconstitutional.
As history would play out, true Indian autonomy would get wiped out in the late 19th century. While there have been many reparations and reservations since then, due to a flood of recent executive orders the short-term fate of Indian citizenship in the states is once again in the air. The cruelty is the point, as is the hope to grab more land and to flex more power whether it is deserved or not. It happened nearly 200 years ago, and it continues to happen today, even though we'd like to close our eyes and wish it isn't happening here.
Do you hear that backbeat? It's the same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
This is a great read for those trying to get a read on where we were, where we are, and well... how did we get here?

A nice find on Thriftbooks as this is a nice collection of stories from one of the best baseball broadcasters of all time. Even though I was a fan of the Blue Jays, a division rival of the Tigers, I always enjoyed hearing the barritone voice of Ernie Harwell. This book was published in 1985, capitalizing on the Tigers' championship 1984 season, and well before the Tigers screwed Harwell into a season of exile with the Angels before returning to the corner of Michigan & Trumbull for the remainder of his Hall of Fame career.
Harwell recounts his start in broadcasting with the Atlanta Crackers in the early 1940s, and how he got a big break in New York City just a few years later. I enjoyed his stories about his first few years as a radio voice of the Dodgers and Giants, including his anticlimactic turn on TV during Bobby Thompson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951. He also shares his legendary story where he was traded (as a broadcaster) for a minor league catcher, and his years in Baltimore which I'd venture to guess a lot of people didn't know he did. He also gives his side of the controversial Jose Feliciano national anthem incident in 1968.
Some details of stories get repeated, which either makes Harwell sound like an old man, or in need of a better editor. Regardless, as you read these stories you can almost hear Harwell narrating them which makes them even better. A good pick-up for any baseball fan, but certainly for any long-suffering Tigers fan.

This was one of many finds for me at a book sale about a year ago at one of my nearby libraries (Maricopa County Public Library System). This is an interesting arrangement of stories as it eschews the typical chronological recounting of one of the nation's most celebrated Civil War generals. Instead it breaks up Sherman's story into three parts: the general lifeline, his relationship with his soldiers, and his relationship with his family. While this makes the book a little bit of a different type of reading adventure, it unfortunately means some storylines are rehashed in the second or third chapter which makes you wonder why you're reading it again.
That said, the storyline is interesting because we all know of the Sherman who marched to the Atlantic (via Atlanta) to deliver a crushing blow to the Confederates in 1864. What you may not know is Sherman was practically orphaned at the age of 9, then taken in by the influential senator and Whig politician Thomas Ewing. This new paternal relationship opened doors for Sherman, yet he failed at pretty much every opportunity. He was a terrible cadet at West Point who never saw combat in Mexico or elsewhere. Then he became a failed banker in San Francisco and New York, although that was mostly the fault of ill-timed bank panics.
When Southern states were seceding, Sherman tried to ignore the issue while also signing up to be part of the Union Army. Abraham Lincoln took a liking to him, even though Sherman had a low opinion of the volunteer troops or the upcoming battles he was trying to ignore. Once in the field, his troops were slaughtered in multiple surprise attacks at Shiloh, pushing him to the brink of a nervous breakdown. Yet his lack of "traditional" warfare experience in Mexico helped him during the Civil War as technology and tactics changed. He got a major lift with the siege at Vicksburg, then the march to the sea started which then elevated him to celebrity status (and in some cases higher than fellow general Ulysses Grant). Unlike Grant, Sherman stayed out of politics, and remained in the Army where he lead the country's brutal attack on Native Americans through the 1880s. In the end, there's a mixed bag of success after repeated failures early in life, and an ignominious stance on natives that obliterated that population. He also wasn't a huge fan of the plight of Black people, and may or may not have been party to some attrocities during the march to the sea.
Despite the odd layout of the storytelling, it's a compelling story to read that will definitely shed some more light on the person behind the legend you've heard about in history class. Highly recommend for history nerds.
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