------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (May 2005)  
  
Ron Chernow, _Alexander Hamilton_. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. xi   
+ 819 pp. $35 (cloth), ISBN: 1-59420-009-2.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert E. Wright, Stern School of Business,   
New York University.  
  
  
Dear Sir,  
  
Your letter of February 22nd covering Mr. Chernow's recent biography   
of General Hamilton came to hand some months ago. The press of other   
business and the great weight of the volume, however, prevented me,   
before this very day, from responding to your request for my views of   
this most prodigious work.  
  
This tome brilliantly elucidates the general's meteoric career and   
his supreme contribution to the formation of his adopted nation and   
does so without resort to the hyperbole or exultation that would   
rightly bring down upon it the epitaph of hagiography, though I   
daresay General Hamilton's many friends will find Mr. Chernow's   
efforts highly satisfactory, notwithstanding discussions of   
Hamilton's carnal and adulterous knowledge of Maria Reynolds, the dim   
possibility that Hamilton and John Laurens engaged in sodomy, and the   
likelihood that Hamilton was born in 1755, not 1757, all topics   
notorious among us who, like myself, love the poor bastard orphan at   
the center of the story.  
  
Mr. Chernow's biography is _learned_ but not _scholarly_, a   
characterization meant mostly, but not completely, in praise. To   
complete the study, the author traveled widely -- even braving yellow   
fever and malaria to visit Hamilton's birthplace in the West Indies   
-- and read all of the most important books heretofore published on   
this most august of Augustan subjects. He also waded deeply in   
Hamilton's personal correspondence and the newspaper record,   
discovering a number of newspaper essays not hitherto attributed to   
the "Little Lion." Readers who are not blinded by partisan rage   
should find the discussions of events and descriptions of men   
accurate and adroit. Documentation is provided, but sparingly, and   
reference to the endnotes often yields disappointment for the   
scholar. Moreover, rather than suspend judgment when evidence is   
lacking or in conflict, as most scholars are wont to do, Mr. Chernow   
weighs the evidence and makes a call, though a deliberate and   
informed one to be sure.  
  
This book, like Mr. Chernow's other massive studies of the icons of   
American financial history, is extremely easy on the senses. The   
composition is elegance itself, well worthy of Hamilton, a noted   
wordsmith. Hamilton's phrases generally were not as felicitous as   
those of Mr. Chernow, but would have carried even more rhetorical and   
logical force and, of course, would have been finished in a quarter   
of the time. Hamilton's oratory could bring listeners to tears but   
his written words rarely had that effect, except perhaps cries of   
fury from Mr. Jefferson. By contrast, I admit that I often found   
myself choking back tears teased forth by Mr. Chernow's prose,   
especially his vivid descriptions of the General's heartbreaking   
youth.  
  
The embarrassment that I feel at making so startling a revelation is   
to a large degree mitigated by the fact that Mr. Chernow is a   
professional writer, not a professor. He therefore passes his days   
enlarging his own already considerable powers of expression, rather   
than toiling like Sisyphus to help others to improve their literary   
prowess. His efforts are more agreeable than almost all other books   
I've thus far encountered that purport to offer readers more than a   
fleeting diversion. Were all books of merit so sweetly composed, I   
daresay more collegians would complete their lessons in good order. I   
would therefore urge professors and headmasters to consider adding it   
to their required reading lists. The book easily surpasses earlier   
biographies of General Hamilton and could even substitute for surveys   
of the Federalist period like that of Messrs. Elkins and McKitrick,   
which leans at times toward Jacobinism.  
  
Despite its great girth, Mr. Chernow's opus is less suitable for more   
advanced students, particularly those of a mercantile or financial   
bent. Discussions of the Bank of North America, the Bank of New York,   
the Bank of the United States, the funding system, and other matters   
financial are of course present, and more or less correctly parrot   
back the ideas of a few earlier writers, but they lack that   
perspicuity and precision that characterize the rest of the book. I   
therefore flatter myself that those interested in the more technical   
aspects of Hamilton's financial system will find more satisfaction by   
consulting my _Hamilton Unbound_, _Wealth of Nations Rediscovered_,   
_First Wall Street_, and _Financial Founding Fathers_, or perusing   
the works of Drs. Bodenhorn, Cowen, and Sylla, if not for their   
literary merits, then for the depth, accuracy, and clarity of their   
analyses.  
  
No missive can possibly do justice to such a long and masterfully   
written book, so I can do no more than urge you, and anyone who   
should see this letter, to read Mr. Chernow's book. It is certain to   
give pleasure on any long summer sojourn, and is much to be preferred   
over wallowing in idleness and profligacy. I remain, Sir,  
  
Yr. Most Humble and Obdt. Servant,  
  
Robert Wright of Abington, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, near   
the old Presbyterian Church on the York Road  
  
  
Robert E. Wright teaches business, economic, and financial history at   
the Stern School of Business, New York University, and is a   
curriculum consultant at Robert Welch University. The University of   
Chicago Press will publish his fifth and sixth books -- _The First   
Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American   
Finance_ and _Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America   
Rich_ (with David J. Cowen) -- later this year and early next,   
respectively, despite the fact that they are not written in the faux   
eighteenth-century style adopted in this review.  
  
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