Alexander Hamilton in DMPL Book Chat

May 19, 2016 Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, historical, audio, audiobook, biography, 2016, ryodb

So this was definitely not a thing I'd planned to do when I thought about what I'd read in 2016.

Of course, I also hadn't planned on falling head-over-heels for a hip-hop musical about the least-known founding father, so clearly my scouting for the year wasn't the best.

This book was, honestly, fantastic. You know how you are flipping channels, and you see PBS is showing Ken Burns' "The Civil War", and you think, "Oh, yeah, that's supposed to be good. I can watch an episode, and maybe if I like it ...more

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Oct 20, 2016 Sarah Lane rated it it was amazing

I have never been so intrigued by a dead white man before.

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Apr 25, 2020 Courtney added it · review of another edition

In The Federalist Papers, Hamilton was as quick to applaud check on powers as those powers themselves, as he continued his lifelong effort to balance freedom and order. In the final analysis, he thought that the federal government, not the states, would be the best guarantee of individual liberty.

It took me nearly two years of "reading" this book for me to finally finish it, but I'm so glad I did! I picked this up in May 2018, with the intention of reading it before I saw the musical. However, In The Federalist Papers, Hamilton was as quick to applaud check on powers as those powers themselves, as he continued his lifelong effort to balance freedom and order. In the final analysis, he thought that the federal government, not the states, would be the best guarantee of individual liberty.

It took me nearly two years of "reading" this book for me to finally finish it, but I'm so glad I did! I picked this up in May 2018, with the intention of reading it before I saw the musical. However, I wasn't able to finish it before it was due at the library, so it sat on my Currently Reading shelf for two years until I decided quarantine would be a good time to finally finish this book. And man, this book is compelling!

Hamilton is such a complex individual--you get the sense of that in the hit musical, but this biography truly drives that home. He's so brilliant and yet, like all of us, he makes some very stupid mistakes. I don't remember learning much about Hamilton in history classes. Surely he was discussed when we talked about establishing the National Bank, but so much of American history focuses on the Presidents and for that reason, Hamilton is shunted out of the history books. Thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda, that is changing, but it's interesting to think about who tells the stories--always the winners--and Hamilton wasn't really a winner in the end. (Though inevitably he was, because he got the strong central democracy he dreamed of). It's also a reminder that American politics has always been a mess.

This is a hefty book, but Hamilton did so much in his life. It's interesting to compare it to the musical and seeing what was important in one but barely covered in the other. Chernow does an amazing job to keep what could be a dry history entertaining (but perhaps we should be thanking Hamilton for living an eventful life?) and I am very interested in picking up another Chernow biography in the future. Though I'm going to need a little bit of a break on them for now...

Alexander Hamilton was trying through his assumption plan to preserve the union, and yet nobody, for the moment, seemed to be widening its divisions more. ...more

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