Reason magazine has published a review written by Dr. Amy H. Sturgis, who teaches in the Liberal Studies Program at Belmont University, of a new book about Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. Sturgis calls the book “a welcome corrective to the uncritical praise he has received for so long.”
Historians of recent decades also have fallen under Old Hickory’s charismatic spell. Andrew Burstein’s The Passions of Andrew Jackson seeks to reverse this trend and balance our understanding of Jackson, the man and the leader. Burstein, a professor of history at the University of Tulsa, sheds new and harsh light on the Sage of the Hermitage and what he represents to Nashville and the country at large.
Burstein’s work challenges a shelf of canonical texts that currently influence scholarly and popular opinion.
Sturgis holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history with a specialty in Native American studies from Vanderbilt University.
