Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow, whom The New York Times has called “as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we’ve seen in decades,” brings to startling life the Founding Father who was the principal designer of the federal government, the patron saint of Wall Street, and the object of both ardent idolatry and vehement loathing by his peers. Alexander Hamilton was arguably the most important figure in American history who never attained the presidency, but he had a far more lasting impact than many who did. With masterful storytelling, Chernow offers the whole sweep of Hamilton’s turbulent life: his exotic, brutal upbringing; his brilliant military, legal, and financial exploits; his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Monroe; his shocking illicit romances; his enlightened abolitionism; and his famous death in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr in July 1804. Alexander Hamilton figured prominently in almost every major political episode of late-eighteenth-century America, often as the protagonist. He was so pivotal in the nation’s early years that his consistently absorbing saga, rendered in Chernow’s vivid prose, offers a riveting and sustained account of America’s founding era from the Revolutionary War to the formation of the first federal government and beyo