Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernows biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of todays America is the result of Hamiltons countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. "To repudiate his legacy," Chernow writes, "is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world." Chernow here recounts Hamiltons turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washingtons aide-de-camp in the Contin