Alexander The Great
Ron Chernow’s absorbing, exhaustively researched “Alexander Hamilton” justifies his claim that Hamilton’s was “the most dramatic and improbable life among the founding fathers.” Hamilton grew up poor, illegitimate and orphaned on the Caribbean island of Nevis, served as an artillery officer in the American Revolution and was picked by Washington as his top military aide. He became Washington’s Treasury secretary, in effect, ran his administration and endured the nation’s first political sex scandal–lured into an affair and blackmailed by the woman’s husband....