Jon Meacham is a very busy man. Busier than you. Busier than me. “He’ll only have about 10 minutes with you,” an assistant in his New York City office warns, before putting Meacham on the phone.

This is one day after Meacham’s staff calls to tell you that the appointment you originally had to speak with him needs to change—something shifted in his complicated appointment book—and shortly after you learn Meacham is running late from his morning and will need to cram the scheduled interview into half the time.

Better talk to him now, though, because give him a minute and Meacham—a journalist and historian who is both editor of Newsweek magazine and a best-selling author —will be off to his next commitment. There’s a laundry list to choose from: the religion blog he writes for the Washington Post; his contributing editor duties at Washington Monthly magazine; his frequent TV appearances as a political commentator; and his networking with pols, presidents and the powerful—including Barack Obama, who wrote a cover story on Haiti for Newsweek a few weeks ago.

It’s all in a day’s work for Meacham, who turned 40 last year, and who took a few minutes — 16, to be precise — out of his jam-packed agenda to talk to The Buffalo News about his latest book, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.”

The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography last spring, is the February selection of The News’ Book Club. At 483 pages in the paperback edition, it makes for a substantial dip into the country’s history, for one of Western New York’s grayer and drearier reading months.

Why Jackson?

Let Meacham’s explanation as to why he chose the nation’s polarizing seventh president as a book subject serve as an answer for the Book Club’s purposes, as well.

“He’s an incredibly important figure who is overlooked,” said Meacham, his thick Southern accent revealing his Tennessee roots. “He’s a lunatic. So he’s intrinsically interesting.”

Perhaps the lunatic part is overstatement, but Meacham stands by his assessment of Jackson as a fascinating and significant president. In “American Lion,” he presents a detailed narrative to lay out his evidence.

The story, despite the subtitle, covers all of Jackson’s life, from his birth in North or South Carolina — historians aren’t quite sure which — and childhood in the South to his courtship of Rachel Donelson, who was 17 years old and married to somebody else when Jackson met her, through his White House years and the twilight of his life, which ended in 1845.

In the old days, as now, private behavior mattered a great deal in public life. Jackson’s marriage to divorcee Donelson—who died shortly before he moved into the White House — would become a thorn in Jackson’s side politically, as enemies and political rivals would never cease delighting in using the episode to take potshots at Jackson’s morals. (Think of John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer or Bill Clinton today, and you can see how the past and present echo each other in this regard — although, as Meacham describes it, there was more to excuse Jackson’s actions than any of the modern-day three.)

“Scandal’s been with us always,” says Meacham on the phone. “It had many political ramifications.”

Meacham, who lives in New York with his wife and three children, said he thinks his own Southern background — he was born in Chattanooga and educated at the University of the South in Sewanee — helped him in channeling the spirit of the fiery, complex Jackson into modern times.

“It helped,” he said. “The drama of a provincial going to the capital city and the complications and benefits that brings is something I bring to it.”

Jackson, as “American Lion” reveals, was a president who offers a lot to dislike. He treated Indian nations with swift and brutal dismissiveness in resettling them from Eastern parts of the country to the West. He was a fierce fighter — in fact, his early reputation rested on his wartime exploits at the Battle of New Orleans. He could be cold, cutting, erratic.

“He was susceptible to epic blindnesses,” said Meacham. “But so are all of us.”

Yet good elements to Jackson’s character also gleam off the pages of Meacham’s narrative. Jackson could be honest when no one else around him was; he also was proudly loyal to friends, family and allies.

Meacham brought to “American Lion” something new to historical scholarship: a cache of 60 to 70 new letters, long kept by Donelson descendants, that highlighted people, events and emotions during Jackson’s White House tenure. The book took five years to write, Meacham said, and during that time he built a relationship with the Donelson family, which helped him gain an immediacy in writing about events of the early 1800s.

“My lens was, what was it like to walk through those hallways,” Meacham said. “This is the first time we’ve known what it was like to live in the White House in Andrew Jackson’s time.”

In the end, Meacham said, he found himself liking Jackson more than the reverse.

“There are two ways to write a biography,” he said. “One is to be utterly hostile. The other is to be empathetic. I chose to be empathetic.”

In the final pages of the book, Meacham builds a case for how Jackson continues to influence the world today. “Jackson has inspired some of the greatest men who have followed him in the White House,” the book’s epilogue claims.

And that may be true — but much of that is a subject for another day.

Right now, Meacham is yawning, slightly, and getting ready to get off the phone.

“I’ve got to get back to doing my day job,” he says.

But not before letting slip one last detail — that his next book about a U. S. president will be about No. 41, George Herbert Walker Bush.

“I think he’s the most significant man who’s been unjustly overlooked in the 20th century,” Meacham says. “The connecting theme on the books I’ve done is looking at flawed human beings who ... manage to transcend those natural difficulties and leave us a little better than we were before.”

As always, we want to hear your thoughts about this month’s selection. E-mail The Buffalo News’ Book Club at bookclub@buffnews.com, or write us at P. O. Box 100, Buffalo, N. Y. 14240.

“American Lion:Andrew Jackson in the White House”

By Jon Meacham

Random House

Paperback, 483 pages, $18