The founding father who rose from poverty to power and fame is again the talk of New York. There is a dazzling new hip-hop musical, Hamilton, written by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the excellent 2004 Ron Chernow biography that it is based on is again a bestseller. Today, with the 1 percent a constant topic of conversation, we cannot help recalling Hamilton’s embrace of a financial elite as the foundation of the new nation. America’s — and especially New York’s — current obsession with wealth perhaps accounts for Hamilton as an icon of the moment.
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