Thomas Jefferson Sentiment Time Analysis
R.B. Bernstein, a professor of law at New York Law School, and author of nearly twenty books on Early American legal and diplomatic history, is one of the latest in the long list of historians to attempt to tackle the life of Jefferson. In his work, Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein provides a well-organized and balanced history of Jefferson as he traces his life from his birth into one of Virginia’s wealthiest families, to his death as a man who was ridden with debt and insecure of his place in history. Published in 2003, the strength of Bernstein’s text does not lie in its ability to dissect this enigma of history, but in his ability to lay out his life and offer the facts as they exist without adding too much of his own opinion. Bernstein’s ability to write without muddling up the information he is presenting gives the reader a fairly unbiased look at the man who, in most of the other works he is covered in, takes the form of the authors perceptions. This is not to say that he does not give Jefferson credit for his achievements, or fault him where he deserves it, but Bernstein is able to point out these positive and negative features of Jefferson’s life without adding too much conjecture.
Although Bernstein does highlight contradictions in Jefferson’s …show more content…
These different labels are all equal and although Spahn uses them all to keep a consistency with the intellectuals that she was referencing, it can be incredibly confusing for someone who is not an intellectual in the field. This authenticity in her scholarship, although correct, proves to be quite cumbersome to the reader and detracts from the text. If the author had relied on a single word to represent each of the distinct categories it would have greatly aided her text and even possibly broadened the field of prospective
Although Bernstein does highlight contradictions in Jefferson’s …show more content…
These different labels are all equal and although Spahn uses them all to keep a consistency with the intellectuals that she was referencing, it can be incredibly confusing for someone who is not an intellectual in the field. This authenticity in her scholarship, although correct, proves to be quite cumbersome to the reader and detracts from the text. If the author had relied on a single word to represent each of the distinct categories it would have greatly aided her text and even possibly broadened the field of prospective