I am almost halfway through Ron Chernow's "Alexander Hamilton". An instructive masterpiece.
I must say I slept on this book. I bought it at a midtown New York City Barnes& Nobles in 2004 when it first came out, then stocked it on my special bookshelf for Harvard Classics, US presidents and founders of the republic (US). The bookshelf has so many books it is very easy to forget any book. I forgot about this one.
Years and years passed. College. Roommates.Wall Street. A couple of suburban dad pants. Too many shoes. The book becomes invisible. Another iota on the fixtures of my household.
I entirely missed Lin Manuel Miranda's Broadway play " Hamilton" (based on the book). I had neither the right wallet nor the connections, I think, to get a ticket. I remember thinking I bought the book before Lin Manuel Miranda read his. An example of unrealized potential.
Being a student of the formative years of my adoptive nation, America, I thought this would be an interesting volume. Little did I know what I was getting into. The book is not merely a biography of Hamilton, Hamilton was so entrenched in the formation of what is now known as The United States of America, reading about his life in this book is very close to reading about the formation of America(The US).
I can now understand why Lin Manuel Miranda felt so compelled to adopt the book to a Broadway play. As a first generation permanent immigrant to the US, I can identify with "the outsider effect" of coming to America that Hamilton had. As a New Yorker, I can identify with the exhilaration of learning about early New York politics, the division between upstate and New York City, the history, down to the house where president George Washington first used in New York City. As a constitutional enthusiast, the history of "The Federalist Papers" is invaluable.
This book offers so much. Mr. Chernow, through meticulous research (Pulitzer prize winner for his 2011 "Washington, A Life", on the reading list, hopefully soon) transports you from the present to the colonial battles for the independence of the US, intrigues of the inner politics of the 1700s, some of which is just as relevant today, whether in Dodoma or Washington DC. There is so much I thought I knew, only to find out that I didn't, an example is the politics behind the adoption of the US constitution, the adoption of the US capital (Washington DC), the inspiration of the US revolution on the French one (for some reason I thought it was the other way around, that the French Revolution inspired the American one, but this history corrects that misconception. I am not even done reading the book and I have filled so many gaps in my knowledge.
If the subjects of the formation of new nations, the United States, social revolutions, the struggle between the aristocracy and the hoi polloi, rhetoric refinement, establishment of financial syatems etc interests you enough, this book is a must read.
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