It's probably a literary impossibility to write a boring biography of Hamilton -- Nevis, the fight with Washington on the staircase, Yorktown, Secretary of the Treasury, Maria Reynolds, and the duel with Burr -- what a story! Chernow, though, has taken a stab at writing a dull biography of Hamilton. He makes Hamilton come off as a superlatively good clerk, or chief of staff. There are long mini-biographies of Jefferson, Adams, and Burr built in to this 730-page edifice. (Hello, Ron, we know who they were and what they did.) Some review (I can't recall where -- the Journal, maybe?) commented that Chernow paid little attention to the details of Hamilton's economic policies as Treasury Secretary, which I think is a fair point. Also, Chernow discusses only a handfull -- maybe three? -- of Hamilton's legal cases, and then only in passing. Yet his law practice was a major part of his adult life, and his economic policies were his most important accomplishment -- much more important than, say, the Federalist Papers, which today are used only for Law Office history. Two of the major reviews both quoted Chernow's quip that Hamilton "must have produced the maximum number of words that a human being can scratch out in forty-nine years" -- which appears on page 5. I haven't seen anyone mention the tantalizing remark in the Acknowledgements (page 735, for those still standing) that Chernow "offered to pay for the genetic testing of any direct Hamilton descendants. The results are pending." Pending? These tests take an afternoon, if, of course, you can put your hands on the direct descendants. Bottom line: a failed book.
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