PROGRAM

Roosevelt House hosted a unique conversation about the landmark musical sensation Hamilton, and the acclaimed biography that started it all.

Jennifer J. Raab, president of Hunter College, welcomed Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, to a conversation with Harold Holzer, the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Roosevelt House, about the transformation of Chernow’s 2004 biography of the founding father into the smash hit Broadway musical.

Chernow has written biographies of George Washington, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and of course, Alexander Hamilton, and is at work on a life of Ulysses S. Grant. He will go behind-the-scenes of the musical, and discuss his involvement, beginning in 2008 as a consultant to Lin-Manuel Miranda, explaining the ways in which the whole experience has been “a biographer’s wish-fulfillment fantasy.”