Knott and Williams expertly show how Hamilton was often attacked because Washington was untouchable.
An elegant dual study resurrects Alexander Hamilton as one of George Washington’s most valued advisers.
Though it is difficult to add any new information to the history of the framers’ relationships to each other, Knott (National Security Affairs/United States Naval War Coll.; Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics, 2012, etc.) and Williams (The Jamestown Experiment: The Remarkable Story of the Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results that Shaped America, 2011, etc.), the professional development director at the Bill of Rights Institute, attribute the ratification of the Constitution, among other key events, to the professional, enduring friendship between these two key players. Of vastly different backgrounds and ages, Washington and Hamilton were nonetheless ambitious men of the Enlightenment who cared deeply about honor at all cost. Both men’s personalities and careers were defined by war; as Washington’s aide de camp, Hamilton distinguished himself for his bravery under fire. Although the two were somewhat estranged immediately after the war, they both came to the conclusion during the Continental Congress that “the common good necessitated a stronger national government instead of a government controlled by the narrow, self-interested states.” Re-energized by their shared vision, they both threw their weight behind ratification—Washington by his sheer dignity and authority, Hamilton through his Federalist Papers. Indeed, Hamilton’s insistence that Washington become the first president, as well as his essays on the office itself, would allow Washington to embody that “indispensable” role. Although not Washington’s first cabinet choice for secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton would masterly define the role through his creation of a national bank, among other accomplishments. The authors move chronologically, carefully sifting the evidence of Hamilton’s indispensability to the president and his loyalty in the face of increasing partisanship by Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans. Washington repeatedly called on Hamilton’s advice—e.g., regarding the Jay Treaty—and enlisted him to assist with the crafting of his farewell address.
Knott and Williams expertly show how Hamilton was often attacked because Washington was untouchable.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-0983-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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