Often when we talk about tough issues in this country — race and slavery, gender inequality, and the like — we deal in absolutes, when acknowledging the gray area would do a world of good.
That’s one reason why Steve Inskeep’s new book is so compelling. Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and A Great American Land Grab doesn’t deal in heroes and villains, although there are plenty of both. Instead, it’s a close examination of the decades of often tortured decisions on both sides that led up to the Trail of Tears.
Indeed, reflecting the competing laws and realities of the time, the book’s first few pages include the concurrent, divergent maps of the same areas, what would become the American South. In Inskeep’s telling, how we got there is not a happy tale.
Steve Inskeep is heard on WAMC as the host of NPR’s Morning Edition.
