Happy 265th Birthday Hamilton

It must be karma because today Victoria and I saw the print version of HAMILTON’S CHOICE published on Amazon and the digital version will be out in ten days.

Whether you’re in politics, law or business, Hamilton’s influence is felt by all of us every day.  He was always my favorite among the founding fathers because he was a self-made man who foresaw America’s greatness, and worked to lay the political and financial foundations for all of us to realize our dreams through vision and hard work.

Hamilton’s death, though, always troubled me. I never bought the theory that he was protecting his “honor” when he accepted Aaron Burr’s challenge, and if you read my novel you will understand why.

I suppose we want to believe we’re rational creatures; yet my seven decades in this world have shown me all too often how passions overrule reason and take us places we never want to go.  Not even the great Hamilton was immune from the tyranny of his emotions, and in a man so gifted, his death–our first American political tragedy–was as cataclysmic as Abraham Lincoln’s, Jack Kennedy’s or Martin Luther King’s.

So let us celebrate quietly today that Hamilton came among us and gave us so many gifts, often at a heavy expense to himself and his family. It has taken two centuries for us to fully recognize the many contributions he made with no appreciable benefit to himself or his children. His life and his death show us so clearly the great opportunity America offers, and also the pitfalls of ego and violence that our culture tolerates, even promotes.