Day 9 — Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (2004)

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Hamilton was an exuberant genius who performed at a fiendish pace [music] and must have produced the maximum number of words that a human being can scratch out in 49 years.

[00:00:09]Thus wrote Ron Chernow of Alexander Hamilton. David Empire Builders here.

[00:00:14]This is day nine of reviewing one book daily for the next year and today we're talking about Ron Chernow's masterpiece, Alexander Hamilton. Now, you probably knew this already, but there would be no Hamilton play without the book and regardless of how you feel about the play >> It's a nice safe space where you don't have to pretend to like Hamilton.

[00:00:32]I like Hamilton. Sure you do. We all do.

[00:00:35]The book is an amazing work of biography. I think Lin-Manuel Miranda, the guy behind the play, said that he read all of it in a single weekend in Mexico and although it definitely took me longer than that, I will say that it was very hard to put this book down.

[00:00:52]This book single-handedly convinced me that of all the Founding Fathers, Hamilton was the most impressive. He wasn't just a self-made man, he was also a kid prodigy. He mastered any subject or field of study that he put his mind to. Washington's most important secretary, basically his quill during the Revolutionary War, resigned his post so that he could see action and risked his life multiple times on the battlefield, co-authored the Federalist Papers with James Madison, advocated for a strong central government with an energetic executive, anticipated the rise of manufacturing and industrialization, uh foresaw the need for protective tariffs, and most importantly as Treasury Secretary he left the nascent republic of the United States on a sound financial footing. I think Hamilton was the closest thing to an American Napoleon, might have been a military genius, certainly was an administrative one, and his legacy is safe and secure in Chernow's hands, easily a five out of five.