FROM THE BEGINNING, the Fourth of July has been an occasion for interpreting, defining, and imagining America as well as commemorating it. On July 4, I789, in New York City, the nation’s capital, the main oration of the day, and the most important interpretation, was given by a local politician and lawyer, Alexander Hamilton.

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Richard Brookhiser’s splendid biography.., succeeds in doing what no other work has quite done before: provide a portrait of Hamilton that brings out the true genius of the man in a volume that is both elegantly written and accessible to a mass audience. 

             --ORLANDO PATTERSON, NationalReview

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 fullblooded life: Richard Brookhiser. In these pages, Alexander Hamilton sheds his skewed image as the "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," sex scandal survivor, and notoriously doomed dueling partner of Aaron Burr. Examined up close, throughout his meteoric and ever-fascinating (if tragically brief) life, Hamilton can at last be seen as one of the most crucial of the founders. Here, thanks to Brookhiser’s accustomed wit and grace, this quintessential American lives again.

A pithy and entertaining biography.... In this bold reinterpretive study that throws down the gauntlet to Jefferson’s disciples, Brookhiser ably pleads Hamilton’s case before the bar of history.... The author"s achievement is to capture the full nature of a great but flawed man.

                 --GARY H. RAWLINS, USA Today

A dramatic, compact biography tllat fairly gallops through Hamilton’s picaresque life. Alexander Hamilton, American brilliantly succeeds in arguing that Hamilton deserves greater credit than he usually gets for his brainpower, idealism, and vision.

    --MICHAEL R. BESCHLOSS, The New York Times Book Review

INTRODUCTION 

1:ST. CROIX/MANHATTAN 

2: WAR 

3: LAWS 

4: TREASURY SECRETARY 

5: FIGHTING 

6: LOSING 

7: WORDS 

8: RIGHTS 

9: PASSIONS 

10: DEATH 

Notes 

Index