This book is SO EXCELLENT. It is a 36-hour audiobook, but I was spellbound.
Hamilton was so different from all the other Founding Fathers (and did not own slaves, by the way) in that he came from nothing. I read this in preparation for watching the Hamilton musical.
It is also narrated by one of my favorite narrators: Scott Brick!
Again, Thomas Jefferson looks like a bad guy. He was in John Adams too. History has not been kind to that hypocrite (who did own slaves and didn't even free them when he died).
Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:
Early in his fascinating biography of perhaps “the foremost political figure in American history who never attained the presidency,” Ron Chernow writes that Alexander Hamilton’s “life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up.” Or, as time would tell, an audacious musical theater impresario: Prompted by his reading of this deeply researched yet compelling tome, Lin-Manuel Miranda would turn its subject’s life into a groundbreaking polyrhythmic spectacle. If Hamilton was not fated to become president, he would, as a consolation prize, become something of a rock star two centuries after his death. “No immigrant in American history has ever made a larger contribution than Alexander Hamilton,” Chernow tells us—and he did it all before his death at forty-seven in a duel with Aaron Burr, our third vice president. He was too protean, too smart, too reckless and charismatic a figure for his full likeness to be caught in a statue, much less on the ten-dollar bill, so one is grateful to Chernow for capturing it in these pages, and for inspiring others to rejuvenate his legacy.
