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ALEXANDER HAMILTON
By: Ron Chernow
Penguin
April 2005
On Sale: March 29, 2005
Featuring: Alexander Hamilton
860 pages
ISBN: 0143034758
EAN: 9780143034759
Kindle: B000QJLQZI
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
The inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton!
In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, National Book Award winner Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is βa robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.β Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernowβs biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of todayβs America is the result of Hamiltonβs countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. βTo repudiate his legacy,β Chernow writes, βis, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.β Chernow here recounts Hamiltonβs turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washingtonβs aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Historians have long told the story of Americaβs birth as the triumph of Jeffersonβs democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than weβve encountered beforeβfrom his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamiltonβs famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804. Chernowβs biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of Americaβs birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.
 Media BuzzNews at 4: Wednesday Reads - November 11, 2015
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