Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson Book

David S. Reynolds' Waking Giant also covers the Jacksonian Era but in a more objective and "balanced" fashion. In places Reynolds' book seems like a deliberate riposte to What Hath God Wrought?, Daniel Walker Howe's massive, Whig-centric chronicle of the era (in the end notes he even calls out Howe), both in its length (it's about half the number of pages) and its subject matter. Reynolds seems determined to be scrupulously fair, for better or worse, towards all of his subjects; he's the rare historian who finds positive things to say about Jackson, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. Thus he claims that Adams' presidency, with its focus on internal improvements and central planning, was more successful than generally considered; or that Jackson, despite his grotesque racism and authoritarian personality, played a key role in making politics more accessible to the Common Man. The book's perhaps less interesting in its strictly political segments than in Reynolds' lively exploration of cultural topics: the Second Great Awakening and the rise of Millenarian religious sects, cults and utopian societies; the increasing diversification of American culture, from the literary highs of Hawthorne, Melville and Thoreau to the vulgar showmanship of P.T. Barnum; increasing turmoil over slavery, territorial expansion and America's place in the world. Not the defining chronicle of its era, perhaps, but a good, solid read that strives to make 19th Century America accessible to 21st Century readers.