How Does Steinberg Characterize Hamilton

In Hamilton, Mark Steinberg successfully divulges details of the life of Alexander Hamilton from his birth until his death. In as much, Steinberg conveys a wide-ranging journey of cluttered, blog style information on every aspect of Hamilton’s legacy as a revolutionary, statesman, family man, and a lover as an admirer of Hamilton. Therefore, this paper will critique Steinberg’s presentation of personal information about Hamilton as well as his admiration for Hamilton, and will also evaluate Steinberg’s cluttered writing style as he tells the story.

This section contains a summary of Hamilton, with Steinberg beginning his book by stating his purpose in writing this book. Steinberg provides a plethora of personal facts and information about Hamilton

For example, Steinberg states, “To be fair to him, he never had time to relax and was always working.” (143). Also, Steinberg’s purpose is to invoke compassion and forgiveness of Hamilton from his audience and he also wishes for them to admire Hamilton, by stating, “For you the reader, this book could be all you ever want to know about one of our founding fathers. For others, it could be a tantalizing introduction and spur you on to read other books about Hamilton or visit the sites in New York City where he lived and worked.” (4). As a result, Steinberg’s judgments may not be objective and his evaluations seem out of proportion to who Hamilton actually was. Therefore, this character assessment of Hamilton by Steinberg is unavoidable because of what I perceive Steinberg’s moral compass may be. In addition, when writing a biography an attempt has to be made to avoid any personal bias, but could be difficult with a book of this kind. Case in point, Steinberg is aware of his bias for Hamilton because it doesn't make much sense to write a biography of someone you don’t admire or deem relevant for some kind of

The second weakness in Steinberg’s writing is in the assumptions he often makes to prove his point. He makes allowances for Hamilton’s behaviors several times by making statements that although may have been true for that time period, but presents the United States Founding Fathers as less than honorable Christians. For example, in one instance, he says, “Adams disliked Hamilton and called him a 'bastard brat of a Scotch peddler'. And he also resented Hamilton's deep relationship with Washington.” (119). It is very bold for Steinberg to make overarching assumptions like this, and is a weakness in the overall quality of his book. Finally, the third weakness in Steinberg’s writing style is being overly repetitive, which is very frustrating for the a reader to remain focused. For example, Steinberg continuously stated, “In the next chapter, we will look...” (73). As a result, this sentence, which is overly repetitive makes it distracting to what he is saying presently. Therefore, a reader can easily lose focus on the present purpose and importance by Steinberg’s lack of organization of interesting, meaningful facts, causing the book to read more like a blog than a story that flows continuously into the next