Ron Chernow, award-winning biographer, will give the Victor Johnson Lecture at Hamilton College on Thursday, Sept. 30. Chernow will present his lecture, "Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Imagined America," in the Hamilton College Chapel at 4:15 p.m.
Chernow's most recent release, Alexander Hamilton, (Penguin Press, 2004) is a comprehensive biography about the life of the first Secretary of the Treasury. The book has received rave reviews from The Washington Post and the Associated Press and is currently on The New York Times bestseller list. The Wall Street Journal described Chernow's Alexander Hamilton to be "...[an] impressively thorough, superbly written and carefully researched biography."
The Victor S. Johnson Family Lectureship Fund was established by the Johnson family to bring to the campus speakers who are alumni, public figures, scholars and others who have distinguished themselves in their respective careers and are recognized leaders in their fields. The lectures are intended to address a significant aspect of American life and thought.
Chernow's other critically acclaimed books include The House of Morgan: An American Banking Family & the Rise of Modern Finance, The Death of the Banker: The Decline and Fall of the Great Financial Dynasties and the Triumph of the Small Investor, and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
An honors graduate of Yale and Cambridge, Chernow is one of the most distinguished commentators on business, politics and finance in America today. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has hailed him as "one of the pre-eminent biographers of his generation" and Fortune magazine has dubbed him "America's best business biographer."
Chernow's first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award as the best non-fiction book of 1990 and is considered a modern classic. The Modern Library Board voted it one of the 100 best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century. His second book, The Warbugs, won the prestigious George S. Eccles Prize for the best business book of 1993 and was cited by the American Library Association as one of the year's 10 best works. Chernow's 1998 biography of John D. Rockefeller, Titan, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and remained on The New York Times bestseller list for 16 weeks. Both the Times and Time magazine voted it one of the 10 best books of the year while The Times of London praised it as "one of the greatest American biographies." A frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Chernow is a familiar figure on national radio and television shows and has appeared in numerous documentaries. He and his wife, Valerie, live in Brooklyn.
