The life of Alexander Hamilton was the most dramatic and improbable among the Founding Fathers, second only in importance to that of George Washington. In his lecture, Ron Chernow will narrate many of the dramatic moments that transformed this brilliant, orphaned, illegitimate young man from the Caribbean into the aide-de-camp to George Washington, the chief author of The Federalist Papers, and the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Chernow will also argue that Hamilton had the most prescient view of the ultimate shape of the American political system and of our economic and financial future.

Ron Chernow is one of the most distinguished commentators on politics and business in America today. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has hailed him as "one of the pre-eminent biographers of his generation," and Fortune magazine has dubbed him "America's best business biographer." His first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award as the best nonfiction book of 1990, and the Modern Library Board voted it one of the 100 best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century. His second book, The Warburgs, won the prestigious George S. Eccles Prize for the best business book of 1993 and was cited by the American Library Association as one of the year's ten best works. In reviewing his 1997 collection of essays, The Death of the Banker, the New York Times referred to Mr. Chernow "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades." His 1998 biography of John D. Rockefeller, Titan, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for sixteen weeks. Both the Times and Time magazine voted it one of the ten best books of the year while the Times of London praised it as "one of the great American biographies." A frequent contributor to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Chernow is a familiar figure on national radio and television shows and has appeared in numerous documentaries. His newest work, Alexander Hamilton, is a New York Times bestseller and has received wide critical acclaim.