PanThe Boston GlobeTo call Chernow\'s Hamilton compendious is understatement. Every place Hamilton, his parents, or his wife visited over a century\'s time is described at length; everyone he met merits at least a minor biographical digression. The result is exhausting ... Unfortunately, Chernow, in his first foray into the 18th century, leans too heavily on outdated antiquarian sources as a substitute for deep archival research. Not at all at home in the foreign country of that century, despite the fact that he traveled widely in Hamilton\'s and his family\'s footsteps, he depends too much on the kind of history served up by amateur old-house historians and innkeepers. As a result, his account of Hamilton\'s early life in the Caribbean, for example, blurs centuries and reads like an old-fashioned Errol Flynn-style bodice ripper ... a line Chernow crosses [is] imagining more than he can prove ... Not satisfied with modern scholarship, Chernow prefers to fall back on a century-old canard and posit an alternate father for Hamilton: Edward Stevens, the family friend who took in the youth at 13, when his mother died. What is Chernow\'s proof? ... while the literate Chernow still excels as an old-time, armchair raconteur, providing many enjoyable asides for the history buff, his first foray into the 18th century has to be deemed a misadventure.
