Kelley Library

Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages [780]-788) and index

individual biography

portraits

index present

non fiction

Alexander Hamilton

bibliography

Ron Chernow

Publisher's description: 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 "a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all." Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow's biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today's America is the result of Hamilton's countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. "To repudiate his legacy," Chernow writes, "is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world." Chernow here recounts Hamilton's 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 Washington's 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 America's birth as the triumph of Jefferson's 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 we've encountered before-from 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 Hamilton's famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804. Chernow's biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America's 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

Prologue: The Oldest Revolutionary War Widow -- The Castaways -- Hurricane -- The Collegian -- The Pen and the Sword -- The Little Lion -- A Frenzy of Valor -- The Lovesick Colonel -- Glory -- Raging Billows -- A Grave, Silent, Strange Sort of Animal -- Ghosts -- August and Respectable Assembly -- Publius -- Putting the Machine in Motion -- Villainous Business -- Dr. Pangloss -- The First Town in America -- Of Avarice and Enterprise -- City of the Future -- Corrupt Squadrons -- Exposure -- Stabbed in the Dark -- Citizen Genet -- A Disagreeable Trade -- Seas of Blood -- The Wicked Insurgents of the West -- Sugar Plums and Toys -- Spare Cassius -- The Man in the Glass Bubble -- Flying Too Near the Sun -- An Instrument of Hell -- Reign of Witches -- Works Godly and Ungodly -- In an Evil Hour -- Gusts of Passion -- In a Very Belligerent Humor -- Deadlock -- A World Full of Fully -- Pamphlet Wars -- The Price of Truth -- A Despicable Opinion -- Fatal Errand -- The Melting Scene -- Epilogue: Eliza