Volume 50, Number 8 · May 15, 2003
The Democratic Autocrat
By Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The Passions of Andrew Jackson
by Andrew Burstein
Knopf, 292 pp., $25.00
Historians have recently fallen into the bad habit, initiated by my father in 1948, of rating American presidents in categories from 'great' to 'failure.' John F. Kennedy, commenting on the Schlesinger polls, observed that war made it easier for a president to achieve greatness. Almost all the presidents voted into the 'great' and 'near great' categories have been identified with war.
Review, 2816 words
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