Alexander Hamilton: works by Dianne L. Durante

In order of publication:

When Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton appeared in 2004, I read it eagerly … because I wanted to learn why New Yorkers had erected four life-size sculptures of Hamilton. I enjoyed Hamilton’s company so much that I worked up a walking tour of the sculptures with excerpts from Hamilton’s writings. In 2012, an edited transcript of the tour appeared as Alexander Hamilton: A Brief Biography.

In 2015, along came Hamilton: An American Musical. By the time I finally listened to the soundtrack, tickets were scarce and expensive. I compensated for not being able to see the show by writing weekly blog posts for sixteen months. My goal was to stitch together an image of Hamilton’s life and ideas via his own words, and incidentally to tackle issues such as the difference between art and history – and why we need both. In late 2017, I compiled the blog posts into two volumes under the title Alexander Hamilton: A Friend to America (here and here). Rand Scholet of the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society wrote:

Author Dianne Durante has made a valuable contribution to the literature on Alexander Hamilton.  Though the research is clearly based on an in-depth study of primary source documents, the writings are conversational and give the reader a truer understanding of this remarkable Founding Father by keeping his voice heard throughout the pages. The AHA Society highly recommends this three-book series on Alexander Hamilton.

Rand Scholet, Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society

For more on Alexander Hamilton: A Brief Biography and Alexander Hamilton: A Friend to America, vols. 1-2, see this post.

Alexander Hamilton and the Reynolds Affair (based on a sold-out talk at Fraunces Tavern in 2019) deals with an issue that makes most fans of Hamilton uncomfortable. Given that he loved his wife and family, why did Hamilton choose to have an affair with Maria Reynolds? And why did he publish a pamphlet five years later telling the whole world about it? Via dozens of primary sources and contemporary images, this book puts all three phases of the Reynolds Affair into their historical, social, and political context. For more, see this post.

The Financial Programs of Alexander Hamilton, by a Farmer’s Daughter, asks: In late 1789, when Hamilton became secretary of the Treasury, what would the man who cornered him in a tavern, or the woman who sat across from him at a dinner party, tell Hamilton he urgently needed to fix? How did Hamilton’s programs address those crises? And what made those programs so useful that the programs remained in place long after the crises of the 1780s and 1790s were resolved? More here.

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