Do judge THE HAMILTON SCHEME by its cover.

And preorder now, if inclined! https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374167837/thehamiltonscheme

Happy to say you can preorder The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding. Here’s the cover:

I’m told pre-orders can help get a book attention. You can of course also order at your favorite brick-and-mortar seller. Other online ways (in some cases, choose the traditional elegance of analog or the modern convenience of digital):

Amazon Barnes and Noble Books-a-Million Target Indiebound (Powell’s has a URL, but the page isn’t yet active.)

Feel free to judge this book by its cover, which I think is great, partly because it takes a second to discern the class war raging within the serenity of the ten-dollar engraving. That’s the book: character-driven political conflicts—some back-room, some right out in public, some physically violent—shaping a national origin story about money in government, labor vs. management, populist insurgency, predatory debt, partisan hatreds, and certain key leaders’ starkly competing visions for—and ruthless tactics for achieving—the meaning and purpose of the United States. While I find that forgotten drama all-important to the nation’s existence and endurance—otherwise I wouldn’t have written the book—I hope it’s less a lesson in history and political economy than a fun, thought-provoking trip full of surprising action, strange people (including our boy Hamilton), and many current resonances.

While the book takes place entirely in the 18th and early 19th centuries, in the epilogue I do run all the way from the 1820’s up to the role of Hamilton fandom in the Obama administration’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, and, yes, bump into a little Broadway show you may have heard of. Even Trumpism somehow gets a mention at the end.

Also hoping to enlist subscribers to BAD HISTORY in helping spread the word. So please feel free to

as widely as you like.

Thanks!—more actual BAD HISTORY posts coming soon.

WH