Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt
by: John Steele Gordon

Hardcover. NY, Walker Books, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 214 pages. Over the past couple of decades, our national debt has become a favorite political football for Democrats and Republicans alike. Yet few Americans seem aware that the debt has a long and (mostly) honorable history. Alexander Hamilton considered it a kind of political Krazy Glue, which would also spur American industry by keeping taxes high. This borrowing power enabled the North to win the Civil War without wrecking its economy and rescued us from the Great Depression. John Steele Gordon doesn't deny the dangers of an entire nation living on credit; indeed, he believes that our fiscal affairs are a mess. But he puts this mess in fascinating perspective. And he's quick to see the human side of economic behavior: "One problem," he writes, "is that human nature predisposes us to recognize depression easily and quickly, but prosperity, like happiness, is most easily seen in retrospect." Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.