Ron Chernow, Biographer of Alexander Hamilton, to be Awarded Honorary Degree

Ron Chernow, the award-winning biographer of Alexander Hamilton, will be awarded an honorary degree by Hamilton College during its 8th annual Leadership Weekend, on Friday, Dec. 2, at the Hudson Theater in New York. He will be presented for an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Hamilton College Life Trustee Carl Menges '51.

"Hamilton is delighted to recognize Mr. Chernow with this honorary degree," said President Joan Hinde Stewart. "He is an accomplished scholar and an eloquent writer. His biography of our college's namesake has done much for the reputation of one of America's greatest Founding Fathers."

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 was named one of the 10 best books of 2004 by The New York Times and received rave reviews from The Washington Post and the Associated Press. The Wall Street Journal described Chernow's Alexander Hamilton as "... [an] impressively thorough, superbly written and carefully researched biography."

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, Ron Chernow is considered 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 called 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. The Modern Library Board voted it one of the 100 best non-fiction 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.

Chernow gave a lecture at Hamilton College in 2004 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton's death. This year the college marked the 250th anniversary of the Founding Father's birth with events that included the dedication of a restored Alexander Hamilton statue and a library exhibition of Hamilton artifacts.