Reading Selections

There are many excellent books concerning Hamilton and the founding era. The list below is updated annually.

Hamiltonian Biographies. There are several good biographies of Alexander Hamilton, but our three favorites were written by Ron Chernow, Richard Brookhiser, and Forrest McDonald.  All three have their place. 

Chrystal, William. Hamilton by the Slice: Falling in Love With Our Most Influential Father. Canada: Empire for Liberty, LLC, 2009.

Brookhiser, Richard. Alexander Hamilton: American.  New York:  Free Press, 1999.

Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton.  New York:  The Penguin Press, 2004.

McDonald, Forrest. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.

Professor McDonald is emeritus professor of history at the University of Alabama. He has been for years one of America's foremost Constitutional historians, and a leader of the "intellectual history" movement of the latter half of the twentieth century. The intellectual historian attempts to reconstruct the environment of the past in order to gain an understanding of the motives and actions of the actors in their by-gone era.  To be able to do this the writer not only has to be excellent at research, but a good storyteller. By contrast the "ideological historian" tends to take a contemporary view and retroactively "spin" that view on the past.  This approach could be based on a particular ideology (socialism, capitalism), or an academic discipline unknown to the ancients (psychology), or a dominant contemporary topic (capital punishment, voter's rights).  Ideological-style historians dominated mid-century America, but intellectual historians have largely eclipsed them in recent decades.

We mentioned these two styles of history writing because Hamilton has been a particularly juicy topic for historians with a penchant for psychoanalysis.  McDonald found this surprising, if not appalling. He writes in the introduction to his biography that "…much of the literature about him (Hamilton) has been written by people who professed neither expertise nor interest in the areas of his greatest contributions:  economics, finance, and the law.  It is as if study of Napoleon be done by people with no knowledge of military affairs, or of Bach by people with no interest in music." McDonald's descriptions of Hamilton's economic, financial and legal contributions to America are first-rate.

Richard Brookhiser is an historian and National Review editor. His biography is well written and concise, containing approximately 100,000 words.  By comparison McDonald's work has about 160,000 words. Anyone looking for a short introduction to Hamilton and his contribution to America's founding should consider Brookhiser's work. 

Chernow's book is monumental and contains approximately 350,000 words, but it is the most fascinating, readable, and comprehensive biography of Hamilton ever written. Extremely well researched, and thoughtfully documented, Mr. Chernow paints a vivid picture of Hamilton's world and how Hamilton navigated that world. He does not ignore the psychological issues Hamilton must have faced during his lifetime.  As a result, Chernow merges McDonald's intellectual style with the psychological elements more associated with the ideological historian.  The result is a warm compelling portrait of this complex and brilliant man.  His minute-by-minute portrayal of the last day of Hamilton's life is riveting, compelling, and passionate – breath-taking storytelling at its best.  His portrait of Hamilton's wife, Elizabeth "Betsy" Schluyer Hamilton, reveals her to be every bit as proud and courageous as her husband. Chernow's treatment of this enigmatic founding mother is the most comprehensive ever written.

Hamiltonian Studies. Reference materials cited in this section are concerned with Hamilton's legacy from the founding generation to the present day. We have included one book concerned with Jefferson's legacy. It is often said that the Jefferson-Hamilton conflict of the Washington and Adams administrations were the genesis of our two-party system. However the legacy of both these great founders is more complex than that statement as these works suggest.

Knott, Stephen F.  Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth.  Lawrence, Kansas:  University of Kansas Press, 2002.

Ambrose, Douglas and Robert W. T. Martin, editors. The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

Gordon, John Steele. Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt. New York: Walker and Company, 1997.

Lind, Michael. Hamilton's Republic: Readings in the American Democratic Nationalist Tradition. New York: Free Press, 1997.

Peterson, Merrill D.  The Jefferson Image in the American Mind.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1960.

Stephen Knott is a research fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. His excellent book traces the legacy of Alexander Hamilton through time.  Merrill Peterson's book does the same thing for Jefferson 40 years earlier. Peterson is emeritus professor of history at the University of Virginia. The fact it is still in print after 40 years speaks volumes concerning its lasting scholarly value. In reading both of these books one can sense how the fortunes of these two founders had shifted from 1960 to 2000.  Clearly, Jefferson's star has waned somewhat since 1960, whereas Hamilton's has steadily brightened.  Douglas Ambrose and Robert Martin are professors of history and government, respectively, at Hamilton College. This superb 2006 volume concisely presents Hamilton's contest with Jefferson.

One of Hamilton's greatest insights was the positive attributes of a national debt, which he said was a national blessing if not excessive. Gordon, a commentator on NPR's Marketplace, suggests the sheer size of the current deficit masks the benefits the use of debt has given us over time. Michael Lind's book is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, conventional wisdom has Hamilton a conservative and Jefferson a liberal. Lind is usually associated with non-conservative causes. He is currently a fellow at the non-partisan think tank, The New America Foundation. So what does a person such as Lind find interesting in Hamilton? Primarily it appears to be his pragmatic and rational approach to problem solving. When one finishes Lind's book one senses that Hamilton would be uncomfortable with any political label. Perhaps he was fundamentally a passionate flaming moderate!

Founding Generation Notable Books. Reference materials cited in this section deal with both specific and broad general topics related to attitudes and movements during the founding era.

Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick.  The Age of Federalism:  The Early American Republic, 1788-1800.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1993.

The Age of Federalism is the most comprehensive and complete history of the Federalist Era ever written, and was a career-long undertaking of the authors. For the serious student of the Washington and Adams administrations this book is immensely valuable, enlightening and will likely remain a standard for most of the 21st century. Both Elkins and McKitrick are professors of history at Columbia.  Beware, however, it is long; approximately 450,000 words!

Freeman, Joanne B.  Affairs of Honor:  National Politics in the New Republic.  New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2001.

Affairs of Honor is a fascinating work describing the importance of the code duello during the founding era. It includes a comprehensive look at the causes of the Burr-Hamilton duel in July, 1804.  Professor Freeman is the head of the Graduate Department of History at Yale. 

McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum:  The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution.  Lawrence, Kansas:  University of Kansas Press, 1985.

Cornell, Saul.  The Other Founders:  Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828.  Chapel Hill, North Carolina:  The Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker.  Miracle at Philadelphia:  The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787. New York:  Little, Brown, and Co., 1986.

Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist.  Edited by Benjamin F. Wright.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1961.  (See notes.)

Novus Ordo Seclorum and The Other Founders together present a compelling and dramatic intellectual landscape of America during the Articles of Confederation period.  One gains new appreciation of "The Federalist Papers" as political documents designed to convince a skeptical public of the Constitution's importance. Miracle at Philadelphia is a dramatic recreation of the Convention itself. There are many editions of The Federalist, and any of them will serve the student of the era adequately.

Bailyn, Bernard. Voyages to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Kammen, Michael.  A Machine That Would Go of Itself:  The Constitution in American Culture. New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Historian Michael Kammen reviews in Machine the cultural impact of the Constitution on Americans through history – a fascinating discourse. He is a professor of history and culture at Cornell.  Bailyn's book won a Pulitzer Price. It was based on Bailyn's lectures at Harvard and is exhausting in its detail. But it brings the people who immigrated to North America just as revolutionary war clouds began to fill the sky to life as few great histories have done before or sense. To read Bailyn's Voyages is to get inside the mind of young Alexander Hamilton as he sailed from a small West Indian island to New York long ago.