Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War (Simon & Schuster), by A.J. Langguth

With a lifelong career of cruelty to American Indians and his role in the genocidal Trail of Tears, which forced the Cherokees from their towns and farms in Georgia to the badlands of the West, Andrew Jackson is perhaps the U.S. president most likely to face a human rights tribunal had he lived today. And yet he still has supporters who admire his populist rhetoric. Driven West is a compelling, readable account of Jackson and early-19th-century America as seento a great degreethrough the sad experience of the Cherokee Nation.