Do we know Hamilton? -- Cometh the hour, cometh the man -- The supply effort, from grand forage to manufacturing -- "The badness of the money" : inflation and war -- Military mutiny and the critical period -- Postwar depression -- Challenging the weak state : frontier secessionists, maroons, and Native Americans -- Shays's Rebellion : culmination of crisis -- The Constitution as reaction to crisis -- A dirigiste interpretation of the Constitution -- Public debt as central power -- The bank uniting sword and purse -- The report -- Small-government apocalypse : tax cuts, austerity, and enemy invasion -- The report's long impact

"This book explains Hamilton's radical ideas in the context of his revolutionary times and in contrast to other revolutionaries, such as Thomas Jefferson, who emerges as the epitome of rural, slave-owning, anti-statist thinkers. This is a book of scholarship, with hundreds of notes and explanations of early American economics and history, but written in a stylish, accessible, narrative style befitting a leading, longtime journalist"--