This in-depth treatment of the age of Jackson (not in particular his biography so it extends well beyond his presidency) showed me that in many ways things were not so different then as now. Back then, the country grappled with wealth inequality - a struggle between the producers (laborers, farmers, and working people who actually produced items but often received little pay) and the accumulators (those who did not manual work but made many through the efforts of others). I rather like those 19th century terms better. Andrew Jackson was the first 'outsider' president from the frontier and not from the founding fathers' established order. I'm still trying to understand early American banking. As near as I can tell, banks were able to print their own notes which basically provided the paper currency. Of course, this gave them incredible power. I get the impression that paper money is not so much the problem but rather who controls the issuance of paper money. In that era, the fluctuations of value in paper bank notes meant that workers were paid in paper money when the value was high and then lost out when its value plummeted. This is what Jackson fought against. This is an amazing work of scholarship in its readability but so detailed that I still found myself flipping to the well-organized index to review definitions of groups such as the Barnburners and the Hunkers. (Apparently names for small political groups and their views were just as catchy as terms such as Tea Party today.)