The Hamilton Scheme

An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding

By: William Hogeland

Narrated by: William Hogeland

Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name and imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It's ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man's most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements—as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy.

Thrilling to the romance of becoming the one-man inventor of a modern nation, our first Treasury secretary fostered growth by engineering an ingenious dynamo—banking, public debt, manufacturing—for concentrating national wealth in the hands of a government-connected elite. Seeking American prosperity, he built American oligarchy. Hence his animus and mutual sense of betrayal with Jefferson and Madison—and his career-long fight to suppress a rowdy egalitarian movement little remembered today: the eighteenth-century white working class.

Marshaling an idiosyncratic cast of insiders and outsiders, vividly dramatizing backroom intrigues and literal street fights—and sharply dissenting from recent biographies—William Hogeland's The Hamilton Scheme brings to life Hamilton's vision and the struggles over democracy, wealth, and the meaning of America that drove the nation's creation and hold enduring significance today.

©2024 William Hogeland (P)2024 Tantor

it's great but racist

Story is great. Therin lies the problem. Today's discerning readers do not want good thought provoking histories. They want to experience righteous outrage over Donald Trump and his plan to kill all the 2SLGBTQTIA + people. The author failed to make 1 mention of Donald Trump. There is no mention of the fact that the founding fathers were most likely closeted homosexuals, or the fact they all repeatedly raped their female slaves. How can a story like this be written? I demand an apology from the author

A great history lesson

This was a great book on the early days of our government & the people responsible.., interesting & well written.., in fact I'm about to start a book about Albert Gallatin the Swiss immigrant from the other party that followed Hamilton in the Jefferson administration...

Epilogue surveys Hamilton in popular imagination

Founding ideologies are discussed alongside economic realities, personal and visionary, that deepen our understanding of the nations history.

Fascinating reconsideration of Hamilton—and funny.

Hogeland dives deep into primary sources and sometimes pulls from them such memorable lines, making the past seem alive, but he also is just brilliant at capturing some of the absurdities of how we view the founding period and how distorted our understandings may be.

Unknown to me

I like this book. I was informed about a lot of things I did not know. It’s interesting to hear this version of history up to this point.