Alexander Hamilton

A Very Short Introduction

Bernstein

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Oxford University Press
01 December 2025

History; American War of Independence; Comparative politics; Legal history

Series: Very Short Introductions

This is a brief introduction to the life, thought, work, and legacy of Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), but it is not a traditional biography. Public curiosity about Hamilton, his life, and his work has swelled, particularly among those intrigued by popular-culture portrayals in the Broadway musical Hamilton: An American Musical. This book presents a summary of Hamilton's life and explores his role in revolution, constitutionalism, economics, diplomacy, and war, as well as his relationship to honor culture and duelling. The epilogue considers Hamilton's legacies.

The book considers Hamilton as a key founding father, focusing on his work as a politician, a constitutional thinker, and the nation's first secretary of the treasury. In that role, Hamilton was perhaps the leading American domestic policy-maker and nationalist. He led the effort to write the brilliant defense and exposition of the Constitution, The Federalist, and later, as treasury secretary, he pioneered efforts to interpret the Constitution broadly, as a generous grant of national power to the government of the United States. As part of that effort, he also pioneered expositions of the Constitution as a source of executive and judicial power.

In addition, as a leading figure in the American world of honor culture, Hamilton was also a principal exponent of political combat in defense of personal and political honor. As such, he was a tragic victim of the honor culture he did so much to establish as a component of national politics, dying as the result of a mortal wound he suffered in his 1804 duel with Aaron Burr, his longtime antagonist and Vice President of the United States.

Though not often an admired political figure in his own time, Hamilton was perhaps the leading and most enthusiastic exponent of American constitutional nationalism. In the more than two centuries since his death in 1804, Hamilton has continued to be the principal advocate of a nationalist reading of US constitutionalism.

By: Bernstein
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780190082017
ISBN 10: 0190082011
Series: Very Short Introductions
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 01 December 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

R. B. Bernstein was Lecturer in Law and Politics at the City College of New York and distinguished adjunct professor of law at New York Law School. An expert on the American Revolution, the origins of the Constitution, and the early republic, he was a graduate of Amherst College and the Harvard Law School and did his graduate work in history at New York University. He was the author of thirteen books, including Thomas Jefferson (2003) and The Education of John Adams (2020).

Reviews for Alexander Hamilton: A Very Short Introduction

""This concise, elegant, and erudite presentation of the life of Alexander Hamilton is just what we need. As Americans look to the past to answer questions about our present and future, Bernstein has given us an excellent history of the life and times of a man who did so much to set the course of the early United States."" -- Annette Gordon-Reed, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family ""Yet again, R. B. Bernstein demonstrates his mastery of the lives and legacies of the men who made America. His concise and illuminating pen portrait of Alexander Hamilton: The Energetic Founder is a welcome addition to the founders' bookshelf, an appropriate pendant to the author's excellent brief biography of Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton's nemesis."" -- Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor, University of Virginia ""Alexander Hamilton was the most consistent and insistent nationalist among the founding fathers. R. B. Bernstein's admirably concise and clear book presents an excellent guide to Hamilton's constitutional and political thought and activities. Bernstein introduces us to Hamilton's lifetime of energetic advocacy, and he shows us why Hamilton mattered then and still matters now."" -- William E. Nelson, Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law, New York University School of Law ""...offers a fine, concise case for seeing Alexander Hamilton as the father of the US government."" -- The Guardian