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A review by emesskay
Alexander Hamilton's Revolution: His Vital Role as Washington's Chief of Staff by Phillip Thomas Tucker
2.0
Ok, ,so first let me start with my biases. I have always found United States history boring. I like history but for whatever reason, reading US history has always been a slog for me. With all the interest in Alexander Hamilton (mostly brought about the musical "Hamilton") I thought perhaps this biography of Hamilton would be the book to change my bias towards US History.
Nope.
Reading the prologue and introduction, I thought to myself "this author is a serious Hamilton fanboy." That is generally not something you want to think about a history author. Everyone has a point of view, but you don't want to feel like the author is so infatuated with the subject that he or she is unable to be unbiased.
So there is that. And the author repeats himself A LOT. I lost track of the number of times I was informed of what a boy genius that Hamilton was (he truly was an exceptional person, I won't take that away from him, I just don't need to be reminded of it every couple of pages). It wasn't just that which was repeated, it was other facts along the way. I kept telling the book "you just told me that in the previous chapter, you don't need to tell me that again." The author also had a habit of adding parenthetical statements that don't add anything to the content (kind of like what I am doing here, sort of).
The biography covers Hamilton's early life up through his emigration to the then colonies, and involvement in the revolutionary war, highlighting the important role Hamilton played as one of General Washington's aides de camp.
In general the subject was interesting, but kind of had the life sucked out of it by the writing style.
Nope.
Reading the prologue and introduction, I thought to myself "this author is a serious Hamilton fanboy." That is generally not something you want to think about a history author. Everyone has a point of view, but you don't want to feel like the author is so infatuated with the subject that he or she is unable to be unbiased.
So there is that. And the author repeats himself A LOT. I lost track of the number of times I was informed of what a boy genius that Hamilton was (he truly was an exceptional person, I won't take that away from him, I just don't need to be reminded of it every couple of pages). It wasn't just that which was repeated, it was other facts along the way. I kept telling the book "you just told me that in the previous chapter, you don't need to tell me that again." The author also had a habit of adding parenthetical statements that don't add anything to the content (kind of like what I am doing here, sort of).
The biography covers Hamilton's early life up through his emigration to the then colonies, and involvement in the revolutionary war, highlighting the important role Hamilton played as one of General Washington's aides de camp.
In general the subject was interesting, but kind of had the life sucked out of it by the writing style.