Jackson, the eighth largest city in Tennessee, celebrates its 200th birthday in 2021. Portraits of Jackson tells the history of Jackson and Madison County with historical sketches of 370 men and women who were either born in Jackson, worked in Jackson, and/or brought notoriety and fame to themselves and the city. included are politicians, judges, bankers, educators, musicians, entertainers, athletes, physicians, soldiers, engineers, inventors, merchants, and entrepreneurs.

One cannot imagine there being any city of comparable size to Jackson that can boast of producing four presidents of major railroads (Milton Brown, Clark Hungerford, John L. Lancaster, I.B. Tigrett), a Nuremberg war trials judge (Hugh Carmack Anderson), two heroes who died at the Alamo (Micajah Autry, Davy Crockett), the designer of the first automobile built in the South (William H. Collier), a U.S. senator and U.S. Supreme Court justice (Howell Edmunds Jackson), two founders of major restaurant chains (Joe Rogers, Isaac Tigrett), a plethora of great musicians and entertainers (Eddy Arnold, Carl Perkins, David "Brother Dave" Gardner, Gail Robinson, Wink Martindale), a Truman appointee who shaped the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after World War II (Will Clayton), the founder and first president of the nation's largest university based on enrollment (Charles Millican), and a cotton broker whose foundation created one of the nation's finest cancer treatment centers (M.D. Anderson).