Hamilton

Hamilton – by Ron Chernow

All the hype that you have heard about this book is true. It is an outstanding biography. I admit I was somewhat skeptical. When I saw how much this book was dominating every single best-seller list, I figured the reason might be because of the highly successful musical (which I have not seen, nor plan to see). After completing the book, I can’t help but feel the reverse is true – someone, somewhere found a great biography about a great man, and then decided to make it into a musical.

I read an awful lot of biographies. My tendency is to favor Americans in the years around the time The United States came into existence.  With rare exceptions, I would have to say that I thoroughly enjoy all of them. So why should this one be any different? Is it really that different than all of the other biographies out there? I even recently read a biography about George Washington (who was close to Alexander Hamilton) by the same author (Ron Chernow), and even that one wasn’t particularly sensational.  For whatever reason, though, this one is truly exceptional.

Like all well researched biographies that are about 800 pages in length, this one is very thorough. It doesn’t exclusively focus on one aspect of his career, nor heavily focus on any particular area of his life. Everything is included.  From being orphaned in the Caribbean at a young age to being killed by the Vice-President of the United States in a duel. Everything is here.

Although there’s a lot of material to cover, Chernow works magic when transcribing the man’s life.  I rarely ever got bored. The book seemed exciting, as though someone were telling me a fascinating story as opposed to simply recounting a famous person’s life. Quite often when writing such a detailed exposition, ennui often creeps in from time to time.  An everyday life of a politician doesn’t necessarily relate to captivating reading.  Fortunately in this case, instances of boredom are rare.  There was one time when I mentally dozed off for a few pages while the author explained in a tad too much detail how Hamilton’s central bank worked, but these instances were quite infrequent.  I felt like I intimately knew so many of the many people who interacted, good and bad, with Alexander Hamilton. I truly wished that I could have travelled back in time to meet all of these fascinating people.

There are a lot of people that didn’t like this man, nor did he care for them.  Particularly interesting is how the author treats Thomas Jefferson. Had this been the only book you had ever read, you would come away with the notion that Jefferson was Satan incarnate.  Equally unfavorable treatment goes to John Adams, James Madison and James Monroe (all early U.S. Presidents, coincidentally). I would recommend further reading on these individuals for a more balanced perspective.  In fact, had it not been for George Washington, you could argue that there wasn’t anyone around at the time of any importance that thought highly of Hamilton. Of course, having George Washington on your side counteracts a lot of adversaries. 

The author is quite biased in favor of his subject matter. Oh sure, he points out many mistakes and deficiencies of Hamilton, but you end up firmly in the man’s corner, despite the squabbling with so many of the other founding fathers.  The biggest source of discontent is Hamilton’s Federalism as opposed to Jefferson’s Republicanism.  The birth of our two-political party system.  Both ideologies have highlights. To truly understand the significance, one must truly imagine life directly after America’s independence is won.  Now that we’ve won, what do we do?  We still need a centralized government to rule. Right?  At the time, many didn’t think so. Such questions are easy to answer in hindsight. Hindsight does tell us, that Hamilton was right about a lot of things during our country’s infancy.

I implore you to read this if you’re a fan of history. If you’re not a fan of history, I implore you to read it as well – just make sure you consult other sources so you come away with a strong, balanced perspective.