Alexander Hamilton

The #1 New York Occasions bestseller, and the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton!

Pulitzer Prize-winning creator Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, impressed, scandalized, and formed the new child nation.

“Grand-scale biography at its finest—thorough, insightful, constantly honest, and beautifully written . . . A genuinely nice guide.” —David McCullough

“A sturdy full-length portrait, for my part one of the best ever written, of probably the most good, charismatic and harmful founder of all of them.” —Joseph Ellis

Few figures in American historical past have been extra hotly debated or extra grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography provides Hamilton his due and units the document straight, deftly illustrating that the political and financial greatness of right this moment’s America is the results of Hamilton’s numerous sacrifices to champion concepts that have been usually wildly disputed throughout his time. “To repudiate his legacy,” Chernow writes, “is, in some ways, to repudiate the fashionable world.” Chernow right here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he got here out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to develop into George Washington’s aide-de-camp within the Continental Military, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Financial institution of New York, main the Federalist Get together, and turning into the primary Treasury Secretary of the US.Historians have lengthy advised the story of America’s start because the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic beliefs over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents a completely totally different man, whose legendary ambitions have been motivated not merely by self-interest however by passionate patriotism and a cussed will to construct the foundations of American prosperity and energy. His is a Hamilton much more human than we’ve encountered earlier than—from his disgrace about his start to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood associates to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his extremely public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal spouse Eliza. And by no means earlier than has there been a extra vivid account of Hamilton’s well-known and mysterious loss of life in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

Chernow’s biography is not only a portrait of Hamilton, however the story of America’s start seen by way of its most central determine. At a vital time to look again to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the aim of our establishments and our heritage as Individuals.

9780143034759