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By the genteel standards of the Virginia planter class, [Andrew Jackson] was beyond the pale a ruthless Indian fighter of rude bloodlines whose volcanic temper terrified friend and foe alike. During the War of 1812, he became our first Curtis LeMay. John Quincy Adams called him \"a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.\" Thomas Jefferson held him to be temperamentally unqualified to be president. Today, we'd say the man had anger issues. Jackson was an American original, a wholly fascinating figure whom [H. W. Brands] brings to life in a big, rich biography, \"Andrew Jackson.\" Brands weaves together keen political history with anecdote and marvelous sense of place to produce a vivid tableau. And after a relentless diet of Revolutionary figures from the likes of David McCullough and Joseph Ellis, we receive this Jackson opus with relief and curiosity. Brands speculates that Jackson's fervent unionism would have transcended the parochialism of his slave-owning Southern roots and made him a Lincoln had he been in office during the Civil War. That is debatable, but it sparks the kind of discussion that makes this book worth reading. On one thing we can all agree: Andrew Jackson was a piece of work.

There is no question that in his lifetime, [Andrew Jackson] came to embody the notion that an ordinary white man could rise and prosper, and that democracy's most-emphatic message--popular self-government-- was more than a slogan. But Brands is, understandably, less interested in the symbolic Jackson than the striving Jackson. It remains debatable whether that Jackson--the flesh-and-blood Jackson, an unapologetic slave owner and strong national executive--was stern and arbitrary because the politics of the democracy functionally demanded it; and whether his inability to keep many of his most- devoted political friends (an element of Jackson's political life that apparently eludes Brands) proved he was disruptive, self- deluding and dangerous.

Before H.W. Brands decided to research and write a biography of [Andrew Jackson] (1767-1845), historian Robert V. Remini dominated the field. In his bibliography, Brands cites Remini's three-volume biography of Jackson (published between 1977 and '84) as \"a monumental work of research and exposition by the dean of Jackson studies.\" So what does Brands, a University of Texas history professor, add to Remini's opus? In truth, Brands' main contribution is addition by subtraction. In the real world of contemporary reading, few laypeople will invest the time to consume a three-volume life, no matter how \"monumental.\" Readers wanting a one-volume Jackson biography have found a new home: The Brands version is worthy. Some of the political controversies make for heavy going. Not even Brands' stylistic flair can make every paragraph about national banking policy and practice a gee-whiz experience. But the sections dominated by national banking debates recede, and the narrative returns to Old Hickory, man of the people. Brands obviously admires Jackson. Brands' readers are quite likely to feel the same.

Always, geography was determinative of [Andrew Jackson]'s politics. Mr. Brands reminds us that in the early 19th century, the central divide in America was still between East and West, not North and South. While the federal government struck treaties that ceded land to Native Americans, Jackson was more interested in security and territory for the ever-increasing white population. The first commoner to reach the White House, Jackson was essentially elected as a democratizer to complete the Revolution begun by Virginia planters. Unfortunately, even as president, he was unable to outgrow his Westernism. He declined to enforce a Supreme Court decision defending the rights of Cherokees to remain in Georgia. And despite -- or perhaps because of -- his limited knowledge of economics, Jackson sought to destroy the Second Bank of the United States, setting off a war with the bank president and ultimately a national financial panic. Jackson's ability to inspire troops, his fortitude and his courage cannot be disputed, nor can his popularity with ordinary citizens. It is fair to say that he synthesized his frontier background and hatred of British royalty into a more democratic style than that of his predecessors. But as Mr. Brands concedes, it was an emotional synthesis, not truly thought out. Despite his devotion to the Union, Jackson never accepted the primacy of the Supreme Court over the legislative and executive branches, exposing an intellectual shallowness. His biographer makes the case for Jackson as a tribune of ''the people,'' a predecessor of Lincoln, but a case that Jackson was a dangerous demagogue, a general-turned-president with Napoleonic leanings, could be made as well.

William L. O'Neill reviews H. W. Brands' biography, \"Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times.\"