Pride and pleasure The Schuyler sisters in an age of revolution

Women of the founding generation cope with war, infidelity, and catastrophic duels while claiming their own agency in this luxuriant dual biography of Alexander Hamilton's wife Elizabeth Schuyler and her sister Angelica. Journalist Vaill (Hotel Florida) paints the Hamilton marriage as a love match between a smart, forthright Elizabeth and a charming but prickly Hamilton, whose sharp tongue touched off several challenges before the duel with Aaron Burr that killed him. Elizabeth dutifully served as sounding board and amanuensis for Hamilton, but it wasn't until her 50-year widowhood that she came into her own, clawing her way to financial stability and curating Hamilton's papers. Angelica cuts a more glamorous figure: she infuriated her father by eloping with John Church, a shady English war profiteer, and enjoyed decades as a prominent socialite until Church went bankrupt; along the way she enchanted Thomas Jefferson and hatched a plot to rescue the Marquis de Lafayette from an Austrian prison. Vaill insistently suggests that Angelica had a romance with Hamilton, citing their flirtatious letters, but since Elizabeth herself was party to the banter, the claim seems like an overreading. Still, Vaill's richly textured portrait convincingly styles the Schuyler sisters as quiet revolutionaries: while holding down the domestic sphere, they led significant public lives and defied male authority. It's an elegant and entertaining account of the surprisingly modern lives of founding women. (Oct.)

The American Revolution and its aftermath as experienced by the siblings made famous inHamilton. The many people who saw Lin-Manuel Miranda's mega-popular musical may be surprised to learn in this atmospheric account that, far from introducing Alexander Hamilton to her sister Eliza, Angelica Schuyler first met him at their wedding and that she herself was married. Brother- and sister-in-law did indeed develop a flirtatious, increasingly intense relationship, and Vail drops one tantalizing hint that it may have turned physical, but she also leaves no doubt that Hamilton's primary devotion was always to Eliza, portrayed here as a smart, blunt woman with more integrity than her glamorous older sister (whom the author doesn't seem to much like). Vail pays equally shrewd attention to character and circumstances as she traces the lives of Philip and Catharine Schuyler's two eldest daughters through the birth of the United States and the decades that followed. Other siblings and relatives also take turns in a crowded but highly readable text stuffed with delightfully gossipy character sketches ("stout, party-loving Henry Knox, and his equally substantial and jolly wife, Lucy") and savory descriptions of clothing and food. Hamilton comes across as ambitious and driven, greatly needing the support of his calmer, more sensible wife. The financial wheelings and dealings of Angelica's husband, John Church, offer a case study in the wide-open nature of the late colonial and post-independence American economy, which Hamilton sought to strengthen in measures highly unpopular with his state-rights-oriented opponents. His death in a duel with Aaron Burr left Eliza with crippling debts, and the book's final 100-plus pages, which chronicle her 50 years as a widow, show a tough, resourceful woman determined to provide for her children and honor her husband's memory. Meanwhile, Angelica's husband goes bankrupt, and the sisters come to realize that the privileged world they grew up in is gone. An engaging blend of perceptive biography and vivid narrative history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.