Steve Inskeep, acclaimed host of NPR’s Morning Edition, is one of the most widely heard and respected voices in journalism.
Known for probing interviews with everyone from presidents to warlords to musicians, he has passion for stories.
In Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab, Inskeep has found a great story: Two men—Andrew Jackson, politician, war hero, and finally President; and John Ross, a mixed-race Cherokee politician and diplomat, who became Jackson’s cleverest opponent—locked in a twenty year battle over who would own much of what is now America’s Deep South.
One man we recognize: Andrew Jackson, whose face graces our $20 bill. John Ross however remains half-forgotten. Representing one of the Five Civilized Tribes who had adopted the ways of white settlers—plowing farms, publishing a newspaper in their own language, and sending children to school—Ross was educated, and he used the United States’ own legal system and democratic ideals to oppose Jackson as he extracted immense wealth from his armies’ conquest of native lands. The depths of Jackson’s clandestine dealings in real estate have rarely been examined, and Inskeep brings these dramatic charges shockingly in focus.
Ross championed the tribes’ cause all the way to the Supreme Court. He gained allies like Senator Henry Clay, Chief Justice John Marshall, and even Davy Crockett. In a fight that seems at once distant and familiar, Ross and his allies made their case in the media, committed civil disobedience, and benefited from the first mass political action by American women. Their struggle contained ominous overtures of later events like the Civil War and even the Civil Rights movements of the 20th century.
Using the lives of these two individuals, Inskeep builds an exhilarating double-narrative that spans the frontiers of the growing American republic. By unpacking the enduring questions of American life—of liberty and citizenship, manifest destiny and constitutional equality—through the individuals who experienced the conflicts first hand, Jacksonland delivers an unexpected historical masterpiece.
Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab, Steve Inskeep, Penguin Press, hardcover, pp. 448.
If You Go: Steve Inskeep reading and book signing for Jacksonland, Monday, June 1, 2015 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 and come with a $10 coupon toward the purchase of the book. Malaprop’s Bookstore & Café, 55 Haywood St., Asheville. (828) 254-6734, www.malaprops.com.
