Historian James Bradley has written a major new biography of local resident and the 8th president of the United States, Martin Van Buren. He was the first chief executive not born a British citizen and the first to use the party system to chart his way from tavern-keeper's son to the pinnacle of power.
This new biography of Van Buren - the first full-scale portrait in four decades - charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.
James Bradley is co-editor of the Martin Van Buren Papers, based at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. He is an Adjunct Instructor in the public history program at State University of New York at Albany, and was the Senior Project Editor of Encyclopedia of New York City, published by Yale University Press.
