Alexander Hamilton

The architect of American finance. The immigrant who shaped a nation's destiny. Alexander Hamilton rose from orphan to Revolutionary War hero to the brilliant, polarizing force behind America's economic engine, and died as he lived: in a duel, his honor at stake. Charles A. Conant's biography traces Hamilton's improbable journey from the streets of Nevis to the highest reaches of American power. As Washington's battlefield aide, as co-author of The Federalist Papers, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton fought for a strong centralized government when republicans feared tyranny. He built the financial systems that still sustain America today, the National Bank, the Mint, a vision of national credit that transformed a fragile confederation into an economic powerhouse. Here is the story of a man whose ambition was both his greatness and his undoing, whose ideas still animate debates about government, and whose death in a sundown duel with Aaron Burr sealed a legend that refuses to fade.