This is THE definitive biography of founding father Alexander Hamilton, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow, author of Washington: A Life. Many readers know it as the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. This well-written biography reads like a novel, and makes the fascinating life story of a fascinating man spring off the page.

I'm currently making my way through Chernow's massive Hamilton biography—the one that inspired the musical—and Chernow can write. This is the next big fat historical biography on my list. If you love Doris Kearns Goodwin, you'll love Chernow.

The author of Alexander Hamilton and Washington: A Life is back, this time with another whopping presidential biography that clocks in at 1098 pages. This exhaustive treatment of the man Chernow admiringly calls "the single most important figure behind Reconstruction" is packed with details and stories but, according to the critics, is rarely dull—despite its doorstop status.

From Ron Chernow, author of Hamilton, comes an exploration of the "dynasties like the Morgans, the Warburgs, and the Rothschilds the financial arbiters of the early 20th century and then rendered them virtually obsolete by the century's end. Glittering with perception and anecdote, like Siegmund Warburg, who dropped a client in the heat of a takeover deal because the man wore monogrammed shirt cuffs. Here are the go-getters of the 1920s to the masters of the universe of the 1980s."