It's a good book, and I'm glad I read it, but it's not a conventional biography. At least as they're being written these days.

What we have is a bunch of letters, interspersed with explanatory exposition. The letters are both to and from the book's subject. A significant number of them are in French--though these are mostly in the first chapter, when the subject was growing up in Geneva and/or settling in America.

The book's a decent history of Gallatin's ideas, of his congressional term, and of his long stint as US Treasury Secretary. His time as a diplomat isn't really covered well, and his post-public life is only somewhat sketched, though it's clearly worth a better telling.

Despite the many letters, only occasionally does the man come to life in these pages--and that mostly when he's talking politics with someone. I'm sure some other biography handles this better.

And there's this "foreigner" thing. Despite his long service to our country, people forever called him a foreigner. There even seems to have been a couple attempts to amend the US Constitution explicitly intended to handicap him. Sets me to wondering if there's a master's thesis out there which explored the topic.

Finally: The author's description of Gallatin's relationship with John Quincy Adams, is interesting. Gallatin and JQ Adams seem to have been both friends and rivals. That relationship's told well. ( )