Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow - Biography

During the past couple of years, I’ve been reading a number of biographies of our Founding Fathers. One name seemed to drift through all of them, a busy but not terribly important character who was often at the right place with the right people but was not given much attention. Thus, I approached Ron Chernow’s massive (over 800 pages) biography without knowing quite what I was getting into. 

It turns out that as a Patriot, a soldier, a thinker, and a leading politician, he was one of the most important of the Founding Fathers. Born on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean in either 1755 or 1757, he was abandoned by his parents and brought to what became New York, where he flourished as a youth, attended what became Columbia University, and advocated for the U.S. Revolution as a pamphleteer and soldier. Somehow, he became a valued aide to George Washington, as well as a leader of troops in many important battles of the war. He also trained as a lawyer. His work as an attorney as well as his record as a soldier and an advisor to Washington, put him in the right spots and the right time. As I read this fascinating and lively biography, I became increasingly convinced that much of the structure of our Constitution as well as the leadership of this fine soldier was crucial to the founding and growth of the United States. 

As a lawyer, a soldier, and a politician Hamilton had the vision to imagine the possibilities of the United States and to help guide it through the earliest and most shaky early years of a country that didn’t know what direction to take nor how to live within the structure which emerged as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Hamilton, through his writing, his oratory, and his winning personality helped to design and mold a new country. Often, however, he doesn’t receive the credit he deserves, perhaps because of his reputation as a ladies’ man and his foreign birth. Nevertheless, he was probably the most sought out attorney in New York during the Revolution and following. He served a term as the first Secretary of the Treasury under Washington. He was killed in duel by Aaron Burr, who had been a political rival for many years.

Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow has written biographies of John D. Rockefeller, Mark Twain, George Washington, U.S. Grant. The House of Morgan, and more. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History and  the 2011 History Book Prize for his biography of Washington.

Although the book is long, 730 pages of text plus acknowledgments and index, it is highly readable, and often quite gripping. I read Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow in a paperback edition which I bought at @Thriftbooks.com.