The Hamilton Scheme Audiobook By William Hogeland cover art

The Hamilton Scheme

An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding

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The Hamilton Scheme

By: William Hogeland
Narrated by: William Hogeland
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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
Americas Economic History Economics Politicians Politics & Activism Revolution & Founding United States Money Funny Witty Government Founding Fathers
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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...

A great history lesson

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

Epilogue surveys Hamilton in popular imagination

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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.

Fascinating reconsideration of Hamilton—and funny.

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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.

Unknown to me

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Hogeland is an MSNBC contributor and a writer for the astonishingly biased and poor "Atlantic" magazine, it shows throughout the book. What we know, America had steady hands managing a war with world's leading power and smart guys managing a credit line with France. Easily could have failed, like it did in the newly independent states of Mexico, Grand Colombia, and Peru. Building the blue water Navy that preserved sovereignty in a hostile world. The infrastructure of mighty economic vitality. Hogeland does not appreciate any of that, this book is anachronistic, myopic, and very childish and Utopian. What makes this book childish:

(1) Never in history have the most talented and smartest people operated a revolution, like America. Robert Morris, Gouveneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay would be CEOs and Masters of Capital Allocation today. In the 1770s they were managing the economy and insulating Domestic finance from London master-class financiers. Russia had mental patients like Lenin and Trotsky running their economy. Cuba a flunky backpacker named Che. China had assorted murderers until Deng. Ethiopia had grad students that starved millions.
(2) These talented guys prevented American versions of Robert Mugabe from destroying the USA before it ever got started. This is a common demise of Revolutions.
(3) These talented guys also blocked childish Utopians, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot figures in the American Backwoods from leading land grabs and seizing territorial Fillibusters. They tried. But Hogeland does not recognize this. This is another common demise of Revolutions. Mexico says hello and Russia two times in one century.
(4) This dude does not understand that debts and debt management is not a strong suit of "Democracy". When your constituents want money and "free stuff" today and the leaders are just renting a job, they crush nations. So many examples. That's how you have Greece, Portugal, and Spain today. Crashed economies, with Uncontrolled liabilities that growth will never recover from.
(5) G Washington leads forces in the French Indian War, Surveys land never before measured, Accepts land grants as his payment. Pays Taxes on his land, and Leads a successful war against Britain. Same army that beat Napoleon, he is written as a "bad" General. Also, he should let foreign squatters take his land? While Pennsylvania is charging him taxes on this land, mind you. Easily could have been a Napoleon III figure.
(6) Madmen could not accurately map the geography of North America had all the best ideas, had we "just listened" to the kook uncles in the Allegheny cabins.

So this is a good book to see how dumb the opposition to Hamilton and Washington really was. Even the Jeffersonians could only replace the people, but not the approach and Andrew Jackson distributed the Bank Funds, not return to artesian banking. Add this author to the list of dumb people.

Kook History for your Kook Uncle

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