Book Review

Canada and the United States

Arnold A. Rogow. A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. New York: Hill and Wang. 1998. Pp. xiv, 351. $27.50.

While reaching rather different conclusions on their common topic, these two books complement each other well. Richard Brookhiser's biography, written for an educated public, seeks to enhance Alexander Hamilton's status in the pantheon of America's founders. Arnold A. Rogow's study, crafted for a more scholarly audience, does much to challenge Hamilton's status as it simultaneously tries to rehabilitate that of Aaron Burr.	1
At the risk of reductionism, Brookhiser argues that Hamilton was "a great man, and a great American. Americans like to think of themselves as self-made, even though few of us are. Hamilton was, and wanted to give others the opportunity to become so" (p. 3). Persuasively, Brookhiser builds a case for seeing Hamilton's incredible life story as an experience he wanted to "generalize" for all Americans. Almost singlehandedly, Hamilton triumphed over obstacles of enormous proportion—illegitimacy, poverty, foreign birth—to become George Washington's trusted advisor, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, creative force behind the Federalist, the most prolific journalist among the founders, scretary of the treasury, and among the greatest American constitutional lawyers. Seen in this light—through the eyes of a poor, nine-year-old "orphan" who rose from obscurity to reach the heights of the elite of a foreign country—even the more notorious passages from Hamilton's Report on Manufactures (1791), those that praise manufacturing for its ability to provide labor for women and young children, look more like a poorly worded plan to improve the odds for future Hamiltons than the blueprint of a cold-blooded CEO.	2
Brookhiser's considerable talents as a writer make this a gripping narrative of heroic, albeit tragic, proportions. The sections of the book that deal with New York City and Hamilton's rise to power positively sparkle. Given Hamilton's significant enemies—including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, and Burr—Brookhiser's conclusion that politics was one activity Hamilton "never quite mastered" makes his political successes seem to be nothing less than a virtuoso performance of a Nietzschean will to power.	3
No biography of Hamilton would be complete without an account of the notorious Weehawken "interview" with Aaron Burr. Brookhiser covers the usual terrain, but specifically rejects as "fanciful" the work of other scholars who note Hamilton and Burr's "interlocking careers and points of resemblance . . . to discern some deep bond of attraction and repulsion between them" (p. 151). And this is precisely the starting point for the second book that establishes a plausible explanation for the root causes of the historic duel.	4
Although a political scientist, Rogow offers a fascinating and thought-provoking dual biography of Hamilton and Burr that is far more interested in examining their respective character structures than their politics. The result is a detailed, well-documented book that, in addition to making an excellent screenplay for a Merchant-Ivory production, suggests that Burr deserves somewhat more respect, and Hamilton perhaps less, from the nation they both tried to serve.	. . .