These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Andrew Jackson, man of the people, was the first presidential candidate to campaign for the office, the first to appear on campaign buttons, and nearly the first to publish a campaign biography. In 1824, when Jackson announced his bid for the presidency, Eaton, who ran Jackson’s campaign, shrewdly revised his Life of Andrew Jackson, deleting or dismissing everything in Jackson’s past that looked bad and lavishing attention on anything that looked good and turning into strengths what earlier had been considered weaknesses: Eaton’s Jackson wasn’t uneducated; he was self-taught. He wasn’t ill-bred; he was “self-made.”