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sophie_btl 's review for:
Alexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow
For me this is definitely more close to a 3.5 book, if I'm not taking the fact that it inspired Hamilton the musical into account.
I liked the bit about his parents' stories, and the references to some of the first hand materials. It's the constant narrative voice that pops out in chapters after chapters, especially when it goes into Hamilton's psyche that bothers me while I'm reading it.
I don't mind having it once in a while but this is a little overdone in this book. I think it's probably more my taste in history books/biography of historical figures as well, but I found the repeated mentions and cross references of how Hamilton's mother, Rachel's life shaped his taste in women and later life choices a bit annoying. I'm sure there are some impact, but the repeated mentioning and rationalizing just sounds like the biographer is trying too hard at exploring his thoughts and rationalizing his behaviour with modern psychology that may or may not have solid proof.
Perhaps I just prefer to know what happened and would rather the authors to leave making sense of the reasoning to myself unless it's an auto biography.
I liked the bit about his parents' stories, and the references to some of the first hand materials. It's the constant narrative voice that pops out in chapters after chapters, especially when it goes into Hamilton's psyche that bothers me while I'm reading it.
I don't mind having it once in a while but this is a little overdone in this book. I think it's probably more my taste in history books/biography of historical figures as well, but I found the repeated mentions and cross references of how Hamilton's mother, Rachel's life shaped his taste in women and later life choices a bit annoying. I'm sure there are some impact, but the repeated mentioning and rationalizing just sounds like the biographer is trying too hard at exploring his thoughts and rationalizing his behaviour with modern psychology that may or may not have solid proof.
Perhaps I just prefer to know what happened and would rather the authors to leave making sense of the reasoning to myself unless it's an auto biography.