****Skip my post if you're sick of reading about Hamilton (because I'm getting there too)****
If you're not American History-ed out after those two books and want to keep reading from the "Books Lin Probs Read to Write Ham" reading list, you should check out "The Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis. It goes a little more in depth about things that were in the musical that aren't directly about Hamilton himself. Like they talk about "Code Duello" (The 10 Duel Commandments), how the founding fathers KNEW history was happening and KNEW history was watching them (History Has It's Eyes on You), and Burr's downfall (The Election of 1800/Your Obedient Servant/The World was Wide Enough). There are phrases in the musical that seem almost plagarised from this book so like, you know Lin has an annotated copy of this book somewhere.
My favorite part of the book/the part that was mind blowing to me was a part that was briefly discussed in the musical and that Lin got a LOT of flack about. It talks about why they couldn't address slavery at the founding of our country and how complicated it was for them to be declaring independence while keeping slaves. It was very, very interesting and I think Lin not blatantly talking about it in the musical was a very clever way of portraying the way it was handled (according to the book) in real life. Like, of all the things he wrote in the musical, it's what he didn't say and learning the reason behind it that really floored me.
But the book is a good read. It's not an expansive, detailed retelling of history like an autobiography - its more like a collection of tiny, in depth glimpses of the lives of the founding fathers and their character. Quite interesting.
