A dramatic reinterpretation of the duel that shocked America. For almost two centuries, historians have struggled to explain the extraordinary duel that killed Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, and ended Vice President Aaron Burr's political career. In A Fatal Friendship, the distinguished political scientist Arnold A. Rogow demonstrates for the first time that the roots of the fatal encounter lay not in Burr's (admittedly flawed) political or private conduct but rather in Hamilton's conflicted history and character. With his detailed archival research, his close (and unprecedented) examination of the friendship between the two heroic figures, and his bold, imaginative writing, Rogow changes forever our understanding of honor, politics, and friendship in the early American Republic.