Price of Greatness

The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy- Jay Cost
Basic Books
Release Date: June 5, 2018

Rating:
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Synopsis: In the history of American politics there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison's bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born they broke over the meaning of its founding document. Hamilton emphasized economic growth, Madison the importance of republican principles.

Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right--and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment. He shows that each man in his own way came to accept corruption as a necessary cost of growth. The Price of Greatness reveals the trade-off that made the United States the richest nation in human history, and that continues to fracture our politics to this day.

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The Price of Greatness explores the origins of much of the American political and economic engines that we still see today, from the starting point of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.  These two Founding Fathers quickly became divided over America's identity and path, and Jay Cost argues that both men were, in ways, right- and wrong.

I always like learning about original context in history- political, social, economic, etc. and The Price of Greatness does explain some of America's early economic ideas. Unfortunately, the book was a little too dry and rambling (and repetitive) for me to manage more than about a chapter at a time, which means I probably didn't retain or understand as much information as I would have liked.  Particularly by the end, Cost seems to stray from the original point of the book- which I took to be the creation of early American political and economic systems- to wander down a recital of various historical ways the government has not acted 'for the people, by the people'.  He begins to talk about corruption- as we understand the term today and as Madison and Hamilton would have used the term- and tries to show the reader how to return to America's founding greatness.  But all he really succeeds in showing us, in my opinion, is that human nature and greed will naturally take advantage of any system, and that there will always be conflict.  

Ultimately, The Price of Greatness does only a mediocre job in explaining "the Creation of American Oligarchy", but if you can get through the dry and repetitive writing, there are some interesting historical nuggets hidden within the text.  I'm not entirely sure, however, I found it worth the effort of working through reading the book.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review