David S. Brown teaches history at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of seven books, among them four biographies: The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson, The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams, Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography.
"""Solidly researched [and] gracefully written.'"" --Wall Street Journal ""Compelling. . . . [Brown] succeeds in placing his subject in the context of his fraught times. . . . By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trump, Brown is positioning his reexamination of Jackson as a particularly timely one. 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."" --Christian Science Monitor ""Kaleidoscopic . . . . The First Populist offers a complex portrait of Jackson, one that escapes the simplifications of polemic or hagiography. . . . [and] deserves to be commended for its combination of accessibility and rigor."" --Los Angeles Review of Books ""Thoroughly researched and fluidly written, this accessible presidential biography will appeal to admirers of Ron Chernow and Doris Kearns Goodwin."" --Publishers Weekly ""Brown's approach offers an often revealing view of how Jackson, drawing on reserves of charisma and ferocity, leveraged his identity as a political outsider to claim widespread popular support. . . . An instructive exploration of a controversial and enduringly relevant president."" --Kirkus Reviews"