I just finished Hamilton’s Blessing: The Extraordinary Times of Our National Debt  by John Steele Gordon. I’m not sure what’s up with me and the economics books, but I really liked this one too. First, as I’ve mentioned before, I have, for reasons I cannot fully explain, great affection for Alexander Hamilton, and Gordon does nothing to diminish that. Second, this is really a history book and, well, I’m a sucker for a smart look at the past. This book is full of interesting facts about the evolution of the national debt and the great and stupid decisions various presidential administrations have made in relation to said debt. Did you know the national debt had already reached a billion dollars by 1863? Yes, that was during the Civil War and it went down, but after 1894 it was never below a billion dollars again. I don’t know why I never thought it was that high that long ago. But, as Hamilton noted, government debt’s not necessarily a bad thing. And the book does a great job of showing how and when debt helped and how it can get out of control and not serve any useful purpose. One downside, since the book was written in 1997, so it didn’t touch on the last ten years or so and I would have been fascinated to read how this most recent era fit in too.