Starts Like a Lion, Ends With a Whimper

American Lion is a good but not great book about Andrew Jackson, America’s seventh President. Read it in tandem with Paul Nagel’s biography of John Quincy Adams.

A Recessionary Blast From the Past

Harry Ammon’s lengthy biography of James Monroe is largely for historians, but even dense tomes like this often contain a nugget or two for the rest of us.