PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA tale of polar adventure and newspaper warfare that will interest readers of Hampton Sides and Gay Talese alike ... Diligently researched and crafted in prose that rarely turns purple, Battle of Ink and Ice reads more like a literary history than a suspenseful page-turner. It covers a wide berth ... His structural choices sometimes warrant a scratch of the head. Short chapters keep the story moving, but 52 is perhaps too many. Some chapters seem as if they end before they even lift off, pulling you out of a particular arc right as you’re being drawn in.
Jon Meacham
MixedThe ObserverThe Jackson who emerges from Mr. Meacham’s telling is both a champion of the people and a political operator before his time ... The second half of American Lion is for my money the more engrossing. The Eaton affair is certainly dramatic, and not without historical implications, but I found the discussion of the weighty issues Jackson tackled in his second term to be more satisfying reading in light of the serious challenges we’re facing in our own time ... The people, for all their centrality to Jackson’s administration, are also the most notable omission in Mr. Meacham’s account. The book rarely turns to life outside Washington, and provides little indication, beyond Jackson’s two successful elections, of how closely his actions matched the values of his time. That absence suggests that although Jackson repeatedly claimed to have the support of the American public, the limits of travel and communication constrained how well he really knew the people’s will ... The thread connecting the president with the public is stronger now, but reading Jon Meacham’s American Lion, there’s a sense of looking back to a time when the two were just beginning to know each other.
