Alexander Hamilton, American

by Richard Brookhiser

Book Overview

Alexander Hamilton is one of the least understood, most important, and most impassioned and inspiring of the founding fathers. At last Hamilton has found a modern biographer who can bring him to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684839199
• ISBN13: 9780684839196
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

5 stars for Hamilton, but Brookhiser is disappointing

I read this book while at the same time reading The Federalist Papers. Whatever one's opinion is of Hamilton's political beliefs, he was an extremely persuasive writer. As I read his articles supporting the new constitution I felt transported back to 1787, as though I were reading them in today's newspaper. They are as fresh today as the day Hamilton wrote them, his passion making the issues come alive on the page. Hamilton's vivid style makes Brookhiser's dry and stilted prose all the more obvious by contrast. Brookhiser reads like a PhD thesis, not a brief popular biography. The facts are there, but Hamilton is dead on the page. To feel Hamilton come alive, read The Federalist, not Brookhiser. To be fair to Brookhiser, he repeatedly comments on Hamilton's persuasive writing style, even though he is himself unable to emulate it. Brookhiser clearly dislikes both Jefferson and Burr, Hamilton's major political antagonists, but he does not present those conflicts with the vividness and drama they deserve. Curiously, nowhere in Brookhiser's fairly detailed account of Hamilton's long entanglement with Maria Reynolds does he mention his wife Betsy's reaction to the relationship. Hamilton was clearly a complicated man, who inspired great loyalty and admiration in spite of his faults. But Betsy must have had something to say about the whole thing. Brookhiser says almost nothing about Hamilton's military record, which was impressive by any standard. Hamilton was far more conservative than anyone on the American political scene today. Still, he was a subtle and complex thinker. Hamilton persuaded Americans to accept a constitution that was (and is) much more conservative than the general temper of the majority of the American people. He convinced them to accept a government none of them wanted, in spite of themselves, by demonstrating clearly and repeatedly the dangerous position the American States were in due to the incompetence of the Continental Congress and the inherent weakness of the Articles of Confederation, and how badly they needed a strong central government. Hamilton's urgency and concern practically leap off of every page of The Federalist, on issues that trouble American politics to this day. Brookhiser manages to make it all seem like old news, dry as dry toast. A minor point: I found that the quirky typeface made the book more difficult to read, especially with all the quotations. In spite of its shortcomings, this book should be read by every thinking American, regardless of political persuasion. Even more important is to read Hamilton himself, in The Federalist, in order to understand how and why our form of ordered political liberty came into being.

Time Slices of Hamilton

Hamilton seems hard to capture definitively. Some books paint him as an extreme, militaristic nut case; some as Christian martyr (based on some of his deathbed utterances); some as brilliant power monger. Here, Brookhiser presents a portrait of Hamilton as honest man making his way in the world as a soldier, lawyer, and almost-statesman. Brookhiser hits hard on Hamilton's gift for simplifying great issues in writing and in oral argument before courts, and one of his most interesting slices of time he explores is Hamilton in private practice after leaving the government. A French visitor is shocked to see Hamilton working late at night in his law office to make ends meet. The French guy assumes that anyone who has been so high up in government is naturally rich as a result of skillfully raking off graft from corruption, and just can't get over Hamilton actually working.The dark side of this, as Brookhiser shows, is that Hamilton's tendency to go off after wild, big ideas and projects also tended to spill his great efforts onto unpaid ground, so to speak, leaving his large family with nothing to speak of upon his death. Brookhiser does not square this with the fact that Hamilton's wife came from the wealthy old knickerbocker family of the Schuyler's, so we have to take his own word for it on the poverty issue.So if you work hard, you may not die rich. But you may still achieve lasting fame. How Hamilton did it is all here, or here enough, to be a great read.

reclaiming a hero of the founding

[Y]ou wanted to organize the country so that we should all/ stick together and make a little money. -William Carlos Williams, PatersonIn two previous books Richard Brookhiser sought to explain, with considerable success, the most elusive of the Founders, George Washington. Here he seeks to reclaim the reputation of the most underrated and misunderstood, again successfully. Though he won a spot on the $10 bill, Alexander Hamilton--because he favored a strong federal government--has traditionally been portrayed as some kind of enemy of democracy. The fact that his main political opponent was Thomas Jefferson, the darling of the Left, has led to much ill treatment by historians. And his untimely demise at the hands of Aaron Burr has tended to link him in our minds with that least worthy of men. In this short but sufficient biography, Brookhiser demonstrates the surprising degree to which Hamilton was responsible for creating and shaping the American nation, both through the force of his ideas and, at the vital moment, by getting the United States' financial house in order.Like many of the Founders, Hamilton's own talents and the extraordinary events of the day allowed or required him to prove himself adept in a variety of endeavors. In addition to being perhaps the only leader of any influence to really understand economics, Hamilton was a successful lawyer and soldier. But the real revelation, and considering the Federalist Papers it should not be, is how influential he was as a writer. His sheer output was voluminous, and he both addressed all of the important issues of the day, and actually convinced people to change their minds--whether advocating that the Constitution be adopted, that the Federal government assume pre-existing debt, or that an industrial economy was better suited to improving the lot of most citizens than an agrarian economy (Report on Manufactures).Because Madison is a co-author of the Federalists, and was the main author of the Constitution itself, he has tended to overshadow Hamilton. But Brookhiser makes a strong case for Hamilton being the more influential advocate. He also makes the case that Madison was something of a chameleon, taking on the coloration of those around him, and that the Constitution's delicate system of balances might have been much different had Hamilton not presented and argued for his more powerful and centralized federal plan. This would certainly explain why Hamilton became such an impassioned defender of the Constitution that Madison drafted, that it represented an even handed attempt to meet Hamilton's concerns.The most heart breaking of Hamilton's writings is his explanation of his affair with Maria Reynolds. When Hamilton realized that she and her husband were running an elaborate badger game he ended the affair, but it was later publicized by his enemies. In a move of remarkable candor, Hamilton published a brutally frank pamphlet which laid ba

A Great Introduction to a Great Man

What a wonderful book! "Alexander Hamilton, American" manages to pack quite a bit into 217 pages: the story of Hamilton, a plausible version of his essence and personality, and a survey of the clashes of Revolutionary War generation titans. Richard Brookshiser accomplishes all this beautifully in this brief, highly readable book.Brookshiser is not interested in all the little details of Hamilton's life and times. He is not interested in reproducing volumes of Hamilton's writings, letters to Hamilton, or articles about Hamilton. He is interested in telling a story, and then making points about the role of words, rights, and passion in Hamilton's character.I'm guessing that most Americans don't know the story of Alexander Hamilton, the relatively poor immigrant who became one of this nation's most important founders. Hamilton today is respected, but not always revered as some of his opponents like Jefferson and Madison are. Brookshiser reveres him. But he writes with a kind of awe for many who did not share the same feelings for each other. "It is impossible not to love John Adams," (p. 130) Brookshiser writes. Really? Who loved him back then? Not Hamilton, not Jefferson. Hamilton and Jefferson were, of course, at odds with each other, too. But not enough so as to prevent them from joining forces against Aaron Burr in 1800, who eventually killed Hamilton in a duel four years later.The soap opera intrigue of the founders as highlighted by this book stands out as more severe than any product of current politics. Indeed, all of what people don't like about politics today was magnified and exaggerated in Hamilton's' time: back-biting and betrayal, partisan extremism, grandstanding and demagoguery, biased media, long political careers, abuse of power, corruption, racism, and sex scandals.Hamilton was the central figure in America's first sex scandal. During his tenure as Washington's first Secretary of the Treasury (Washington alone rises above the fray in Brookshiser's early America), Hamilton was accused of financial shenanigans. Proof lay in payments he made to a shady character named James Reynolds. Hamilton's defense was a detailed confession to an affair with Reynolds' wife - the payments were more or less hush money. Reynolds himself was guilty of many things, including apparently using his wife as bait in this sordid blackmail scheme. Hamilton denied financial malfeasance, but admitted adultery like no American politician since. I'm not sure if Brookshiser intended his Hamilton to be compared to Bill Clinton, but I couldn't get the comparison out of my head. Hamilton and Clinton share much in common up to a point. Both came from highly inauspicious beginnings but rose to the pinnacles of power. Both came from broken homes with unreliable father-figures who abandoned them early in life. Both were highly intelligent Ivy-League lawyers. Both had faith in the federal government. And b

Thank you, Mr. Brookhiser

This book is long overdue. While our bookstores are glutted with books on Jefferson, we had only McDonald's bio of Hamilton left in print. Flexner's odd "Young Hamilton" was recently rereleased, not much of a comfort to Hamiltonians. Michael Lind's "Hamilton's Republic" gave me hope that perhaps Alexander was finally being dragged out of obscurity into the much deserved limelight he always craved. I've read most of the biographies on Hamilton and I'd rate Brookhiser number one on readability and vivid portrayal. If you're looking for more detail, try to track down Hendrickson's long out of print two volume work. It's a tad eccentric but a hell of a good read. Forrest McDonald's bio is excellent as is John Miller's. If you stumble onto Frederick Scott Oliver's 1921 bio, gobble it up. It's way too worshipful but it illustrates excellently how an earlier generation held Hamilton in much higher esteem than they did Jefferson. Broadus Mitchell shows you don't have to be conservative to find Hamilton an inspiration. When you finish with Mr. Brookhiser, if you have time to read only one more book on Hamilton, without a doubt the one to read is Clinton Rossiter's "Alexander Hamilton and the Constiution." A brilliant, brillaint study. After reading Rossiter I was a Hamitonian for life. I hope Brookhiser has a similar effect on a new generation of readers. Sadly, as stated above, most of these books are out of print so Brookhiser's work is very much appreciated.