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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Ron Chernow, 2005, Penguin Books<\/p>\n
This is a fantastic book that is chock-full of information about Alexander Hamilton, but, more importantly, his imprint on the structure of our federal government.\u00c2\u00a0 It also provides a lot of insight regarding the divisions that we currently have in how individuals view our federal government.<\/p>\n
The book delves into the particular talents of Hamilton and how he used them to structure the government in his role as Secretary of Treasurer during Washington’s presidency.\u00c2\u00a0 His influence went well beyond his own cabinet post as many of the other agencies had a very limited bureaucracy.\u00c2\u00a0 Hamilton had the unwavering support of Washington for most of his endeavors.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, on the other hand, was viewed by Washington with a high level of distrust.<\/p>\n
Chernow’s depiction of our founding fathers is unvarnished.\u00c2\u00a0 He not only extolls the many talents of Hamilton, but also fully\u00c2\u00a0describes his shortcomings.\u00c2\u00a0 His depictions of some of the other founding fathers, such as Jefferson and John Adams, is highly critical.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, I never knew that Jefferson was such a snake when he held his post as Secretary of State.\u00c2\u00a0 His actions would probably be grounds for charges of treason in today’s political environment.\u00c2\u00a0 Likewise, Adams is portrayed as someone with personal flaws that sometimes made him appear as a raving lunatic.\u00c2\u00a0 He probably had a thinner skin than even our current president!<\/p>\n
.One other insight that I gained from this book was that, although the United States was formed as a federal republic under the Constitution, the “United” part of our country’s name was and continues to be somewhat tenuous.\u00c2\u00a0 The federal government is supposedly the glue that holds our country together, but it is now often viewed as the oppressive institution that keeps us from doing whatever we would like to be doing.\u00c2\u00a0 One wonders if the Civil War, which supposedly was able to preserve the Union, did, in fact, settle it for all time as we seem to be at least as divided now as we were during the first few\u00c2\u00a0years of our new nation.<\/p>\n
While the book\u00c2\u00a0is a wealth of information about that period in the history of our country, it was sometimes pretty tedious to read and, in some places, seemed repetitive.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s over seven hundred pages of fairly small print and it took me almost three months to wade through it. (It sometimes put me to sleep after only a paragraph or two perhaps due to my chronic lack of sleep rather than the subject matter).\u00c2\u00a0 Despite my efforts to slog through it, I would highly recommend that anyone who has an interest in how the federal government was formed read this book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Ron Chernow, 2005, Penguin Books This is a fantastic book that is chock-full of information about Alexander Hamilton, but, more importantly, his imprint on the structure of our federal government.\u00c2\u00a0 It also provides a lot of insight regarding the …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[17,20,16,38],"class_list":["post-2079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","tag-biography","tag-history","tag-non-fiction","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2080,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions\/2080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}