Books in Lives to remember series

The beginning of the American Revolution was not far off when a totally unexpected event gave young Alexander Hamilton his long-hoped for opportunity to leave his native West Indies and to enter college in America. He had lost both parents before he was twelve and had been forced to give up his schooling to work as an apprenticed clerk in a countinghouse. By the time he was fourteen, however, this talented, ambitious boy had been made chief clerk of the firm and had demonstrated the financial geniuss that was to lead to his appointment eighteen years later as the first Secretary of the Treasury of his adopted country, the new United States of America