The Age of Jackson

xiv, 577 pp. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History. After a general review of the achievements and vision of "Jacksonian Democracy," we find fascinating chapters on the birth of pro-business populism ("The Whig Counter-Reformation"), the splitting of the Democratic Party over slavery ("The Free Soil Movement"), and the almost subconscious transformation of the small-government ideology of Jeffersonianism into the reality-based government interventions of Jackson and Van Buren in the service of the same ideals of democracy and equality.