Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

by Amanda Vaill

America's Founding Era reconsidered through the lives of two women as formidable as, and in some respects stronger than, the men they loved, married, and mothered.

Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, born to wealth and privilege in New York's Hudson Valley during the latter half of the 18th century, were raised to make good marriages and supervise substantial households. Instead they became embroiled in the turmoil of America's insurrection against Great Britain — and rebelled themselves, in ways as different as each was from the other, against the destiny mapped out for them.
Glamorous Angelica, who sought fulfillment through attachments to powerful men, eloped at twenty with a war profiteer and led a luxurious life, first in Paris, then in London, charming Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Prince of Wales. Eliza, one year her junior, too candid for flirtation and uninterested in influence or intrigue, married a penniless illegitimate outsider, Alexander Hamilton, and devoted herself to his career. But after his appointment as America's first treasury secretary, she was challenged by the controversies in which he became involved, not the least of which was the attraction that grew between him and her adored sister.
When tragedy followed, everything changed for both women: one deprived of her animating spirit, the other improbably gaining a new, self-determined life. "You would not have suffered if you had married into a family less near the sun," wrote Angelica to Eliza, "but then [you would have missed] the pride, the pleasure, the nameless satisfactions."
Drawing on deep archival research, including never-published records and letters, Amanda Vaill interweaves this family drama with its historical context, creating a narrative with the sweep and intimacy of a nineteenth-century novel. Full of battles and dinner parties, murky politics and transparent frocks, fierce loyalty and betrayals both public and personal, Pride and Pleasure brings to two extraordinary American heroines to life.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Biography Memoir, American History, Politics, American Revolution

721 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 21, 2025

About the author

Amanda Vaill is the author of PRIDE AND PLEASURE, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and a finalist for the NBCC Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; HOTEL FLORIDA; SOMEWHERE; and the best-selling EVERYBODY WAS SO YOUNG, also an NBCC finalist. She has co-authored, contributed to, or edited a number of other books in the field of arts and culture. She is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter and her journalism and criticism have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Town and Country, and New York. A past fellow of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, she lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Tara Cignarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pride and Pleasure by Amanda Vaille
Writing: A-
Information: B+
Format: B
Best Aspect: Very different nonfiction history book. Don’t let the 700+ pages scare you off about 25% of it is notes.
Worst Aspect: This was so detailed and so long and history of this depth is not my preferred reading.
Recommend: Yes.
NetGalley ARC release 10/21/25

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through the Schuyler women the story of the American Revolution and the fledgling nation is told. You see the interpersonal relationships of the major players and the roles that love, competition and jealousy played in the lives of the founders..

This is a major work of incredible research.

There are 5 Schuyler sisters, while all appear, this book belongs to Angelica and Eliza (Elizabeth). Sister, Peggy (Margaret) married well, became ill and died young. Sisters Cornelia and Kitty (Catherine) are too young to experience the Revolution as Angelica and Eliza do. They feature most at the end where there are estate/ financial issues.

Angelica, the oldest, is a social butterfly…. today we would call her an extraordinary networker. She spends 16 Years in England (with short residences in France) so you see the European perspective on the events in America. In England she socializes with John and Abagail Adams and in France Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Her husband is rich and she lives, dresses and entertains the part. She is also a flirt. She, a married woman, attracts the widowed Thomas Jefferson who sends her lewd drawings and hints that they should travel together. Angelica is no fool, she spots something very untoward with TJ and Sally, his servant.

Angelica’s teasings are not always light. The author, Amanda Veill, shows the correspondence between Angelica and her sister Eliza’s husband, Alexander Hamilton. The words and phrases of affection go far beyond the flowery language of the day.

Eliza does not let on about her feelings, but it is hard to believe she does not know. Vaille shows not only the letters, but also primary source reports of her husband and sister together.

Eliza is a hard and efficient worker. From her political family she is rooted in the ways of war and politics: she advises her husband (the outsider from Neves) Hamilton. All the while she is running a complex household. The Hamiltons will not use slaves (as Eliza's sisters do) to help cook, clean and tend to children. Hamilton does not have a steady income, So you see how she manages the challenge of feeding, clothing and educating their many children and the children they take in all the while assisting her husband.

She further proves to be an ideal wife in the Reynolds’s Affair, which is immortalized in Miranda’s “I’m in Love with your Body”. Vaille’s explanation of why Hamilton would write such sentiments is the best I’ve seen. His very public defense of his affair with Mrs. Reynolds makes the humiliation even greater for the steadfast Eliza. It adds to the pain of Angelica’s flirtation with Alexander and the loss of her young son in a senseless duel in which her other son played a part.

Eliza's life contrasts with that of her sister Angelica’s life in England . Angelica’s sons go to the best schools. She hob nobs with aristocrats. You read how she furnishes her gorgeous home and of her extensive wardrobe. Vaille describes her parties and balls with guest lists that include the Prince of Wales. No expense is spared.

Angelica helps friends escape the terrors of the French Revolution. There is an episode of how she plots an (almost successful) escape for Lafayette held in prison in Saxony.

There is a downside for Angelica too. She had to overcome her embarrassment that her husband was not who he said he was. It is not said outright, that his wealth is from war profiteering. Her husband gambles and she needs to keep up appearances when their finances are shaky. No one must know when they try to sell their home/estate. She misses her family and America.

There is a lot on how the US government was set up amidst the clash of personalities of the founders. You read of George Washington’s detractors and then, how after his death he was revered such that it was considered to be disloyal to say that Hamilton ghost wrote his visionary farewell address.

While there is a good reporting on what led up to the Hamilton-Burr duel there is not much on the actual duel or of Hamilton’s short convalescence.

What follows is how Eliza fights to get Hamilton’s papers and have a biography published.

There are legal issues when the Schuyler patriarch dies which continue as Eliza hosts Lafayette on his American tour, is active in charitable work and manages her own impoverished state… all with 3 still dependent children.

Eliza is the last of the Schuyler sisters, she dies at age 97.

This is highly recommended for those who want to take a deep dive into the American Revolution and its aftermath.

[Laura✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amanda Vaill’s Pride and Pleasure is a sweeping historical narrative that chronicles the lives of the Schuyler sisters, namely Eliza, and their close family and friends. With meticulous research, Vaill brings the past to life in a way that is both intellectually satisfying and engaging.

What Vaill did particularly well was weave the personal stories of these historical figures with the national and global forces that shaped the era. Readers will not only discover new perspectives on the lives of Eliza and Alexander and their inner circle but also gain a deeper understanding of the wars, revolutions, pandemics, and recessions that shaped their world.

While the book is a bit of an investment in time (it's a big one!), it did keep my interest and gave me many new insights into the family and era.

This was an ARC review for NetGalley.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written, deeply researched, deep-dive into the Schuyler family [with the main focus on Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy, even though there WERE other sisters; they are mentioned briefly and to be honest, I could not even tell you their names] and their lives, spouses, the Revolutionary War and its aftermath, along with their lives long after the war was over. The later half [ish] of the book focuses mainly on Eliza and all she did and accomplished after Alexander Hamilton died [she was a true force to be reckoned with; the parts telling about her fight to get his papers recognized by Congress was really interesting]; I was and am in awe of all she accomplished in her lifetime, most of it without much money [when Alexander was killed, he left $55,000 in debt. In modern money, that is close to $3million dollars!!] and ALWAYS with some man trying to tell her just WHY she shouldn't!

This book is extremely detailed and to be honest, sometimes it gets bogged down with all that minutiae and it is there that I struggled; I am a reader of nonfiction and history [over half of my books are of that genre/subgenre] and love a good detail, but whoosh this was a lot of a lot at times. Also, be prepared from some confusion in regards to ALL. THE. NAMES. THAT. ARE. THE. SAME. [I seriously lost track of how many Philip, Catherine, Angelica, Eliza/Betsy, Peggy, John, and Alexander names there were. An example; all of the living children of the original 14 of Philip and Catherine Schuyler that had children had a Philip - it gets very confusing very quickly and I would have cried at the sight of a family tree]; if I had known it was going to be so confusing, I would have tried to make a list, but to be honest, I am quite certain I would have missed some. ;-)

Overall, this was an excellent read and I truly enjoyed learning more about this fascinating family.

Thank you to NetGalley, Amanda Vaill, and Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Chet Cutick · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, my one criticism: The book really could've used a couple of pages of family trees- the Hamiton's the Church's, etc. So many of the children and grandchildren had the same names, it took some effort at times to figure out which was which.

Beyond that, what a wonderful book. Yes, a bit more gossipy than your traditional historical biography, but that also made it fun. By the last few pages, as Eliza, in her late 90s (so very unusual for that time) was failing, I found myself wiping away tears. I've always been a huge fan of Alexander Hamilton* so this book fills out the other half of his life. Eliza lived so long, rebuilding her husband's legacy. When she passes away, I felt like I was there.

Whenever I go to Manhattan (I live in NYC), my usual bus stop is Trinity Church. It's been a long time since going into the cemetery there, usually just walking by it to get to the subway. But next time, I'll stop in and say thank you- to Alexander, Eliza, and Angelica.


*When I was in high school, I had a teacher for an American government class, that always made his students stand up whenever the name of Alexander Hamilton was mentioned. Back in 1978, we all laughed at the comedy of it, but we did stand because we absolutely loved our teacher. We became not just his fans, but fans of his hero, Alexander Hamilton.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recording 4, book 5 stars. This is a shared biography of the Schuyler sisters, most famous for their connection to Alexander Hamilton and newly so thanks to Lin Manuel Miranda. Eliza is the focus, both for her much longer lifetime and her marriage to Hamilton, but Angelica gets her share of attention too. (less so Peggy, who seems to have sadly become an invalid.) For readers of Revolutionary-era history much will be familiar (including the opening sequence of the Hamilton-Burr duel) but the research is deep and the writing is extremely accessible. It moves faster than the page count suggests.
The recording was mostly very good - I very much liked the different narrators for the sections focused on the Schuylers vs sections focused more on the history of the period. Both readers were very good, without a ton of acting but occasionally notable accents, especially French. There are a handful of curiously wrong pronounciations, often of proper nouns - most egregiously saying ConCORDE (that's an airplane) instead of CONkerd (Mass). I feel strongly that if you're going to read a book about the American Revolution, you should get the place names right.
All in all, a very enjoyable listen. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book and would rate it the best American biography/history I have read… and I’ve read a lot of them. I was reading this as we reflected on the 250 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I have read many other books about our founding fathers and, more specifically, about Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler. I really enjoyed the sweeping thoroughness of Amanda Vaill’s account. Eliza- and Angelica- were at or near the center of founding events and founding fathers. Maybe because Vaill was telling their stories she could include details of existence, relationships, reactions, etc. that filled out the context of the “bigger” historical events. This is a richer, more personal treatment of these people and their history than I have seen. I could feel the confident enthusiasm of a great research informed story teller.

[Anne Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read. It makes me want to give Hamilton another . Discovered from my daughter that I had been mispronouncing Eliza and Angelica's maiden name for the entire time !

[susie bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colonists--they're just like us!

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the Pulitzer Prize winner for Biography in 2026.

It is hard to avoid the feeling that the author's real goal in writing this book was to put out as much definitive proof that there ever will be that Alexander Hamilton was engaged in some kind of sexually intimate connection with Angelica Schuyler - his wife's sister - throughout the time they knew one another.

It intrudes upon everything in this narrative, as long as either Hamilton or Angelica are alive, and in some cases thanks to the discovery of papers posthumously it continues on even after they are dead. Nor is it necessarily limited to showing this about just these two people. One gets the sense she wants the world to know Hamilton probably had something going on with his friend John Laurens who did not survive the Revolutionary War, as Hamilton was extremely weird about telling Laurens that he had gotten engaged (and apparently hinted he'd suggest a threesome except he knew Eliza would never go for it?), that Angelica did something with Thomas Jefferson when the two were both in Paris (Jefferson had a portrait of Angelica that she gave him), and so on. This did not stop, on down to the book observing that at one point in time, long after Hamilton was dead, Angelica moved with a then-eighteen-year-old son who "may have borne a strong resemblance to his uncle Alexander" - a resemblance the author asserts was even stronger in the next generation, a grandson named Alexander Hamilton Church, seemingly on the basis of a portrait painted of AHC resembling a well-known portrait of Hamilton.

It's not that these ideas are entirely uninteresting to me. There's something to be said for piercing myths of the founding generation, that these people were infallible in their personal and political lives and perfect and that the choices they made about the structure of government that is largely still operative today must be held in place forever. Except that's an entire different book - indeed, a different category of 2026 Pulitzer winner (History - We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution) - and not something that seems to be of interest to the author here.

There was not enough of this there to make a book just about all of that who was maybe secretly having sex with who, so it became a more general thing about the Schuyler sisters, mostly Angelica and Eliza and some of Peggy and those younger than them as well. At the outset, the author writes of the difficulties of trying to collect primary sources from or about women of this time period, so there are many details she describes as deductions, and otherwise there is a lot of speculation in the text - perhaps and maybe and other such words about things that Eliza could have felt, could have said, could have done.

At times it feels like it is a biography of Hamilton himself, just with a bit more attention on Eliza and Angelica and some other things going on the sidelines. As if the gravity of the man cannot be escaped even in a biography about his wife and sister-in-law whose sole purpose is to shine more light on these women. That's another tough thing about it, for me. I might have found it to be less of a slog if this book was not retreading a lot of ground that I have read in some other books - the big Chernow Alexander Hamilton, David McCullough on John Adams, Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, even America's favorite Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette in Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution - from this same time period. There are a lot of pages here and a lot of the pages were me thinking, yes, yes, I already know about this. Rare is the book that takes me every single day of a three-week library checkout to finish it. This one did. It's not a compliment to say that.

Yet, I don't want to say that I spent the whole time waiting for it to be over with. There are many years of Eliza's life that come after Hamilton is shot by Burr, and in a lot of ways it becomes more interesting to read once he is gone, because the focus really is just on her and the things that are going on in her life, with her family, that are more personal in nature. It's not like she or Angelica can go vote in any election. They are observers to what is going on. Eliza, in particular, is almost invisible for a while, on account of her being so strongly associated with her husband, who was largely in the political wilderness at the time of his death and whose political enemies spent the next couple of decades in power after he died. That's genuinely new stuff for me. Seeing how dogged she was in trying to track down all of his papers, how hard she worked to try to find someone who would write a biography about him. Eventually seeing the political climate change, such that Hamilton's name was praised again, and his widow became interesting by virtue of being one of the few people still around who was alive for the founding of the country.

It really does seem like she was a remarkable woman, even if we are never going to know exactly what she thought about the business of her husband infamously having an affair with Maria Reynolds, and revealing that in a pamphlet as a counter to charges that he was engaging in financial corruption. In Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton musical, this is an emotional song by Eliza that is part of the aftermath, "I'm removing myself from the narrative / you don't get to know what I said" - which apparently takes a lot of dramatic license, as this biography states that Eliza removed her letters only after Hamilton had died, and that in this she was following the precedent of Martha Washington, who destroyed letters between her and George after his death. Eliza's quest to help found an orphanage and keep it running, her needing to pursue her husband's old war pension just to stay alive, gathering the papers, trying to get a Hamilton biography written that credits him for doing a lot of the work on gathering the thoughts for Washington's famous farewell address, then eventually doing some lobbying of Congress to get them to buy Hamilton's papers for public archiving the same as it had done for men like Jefferson and Madison. It was almost worth reading all of this just to get her reaction to James Monroe showing up at her house in like 1830, asking forgiveness over his part in the Reynolds Affair coming to light - he cynically refused to tell the truth about it in order to score political points - and Eliza basically told him to his face to eat shit, that she hadn't forgiven him and never would. Later, she lived in the house where he died. Amazing.

There were a lot of little interesting bits such as this, with the narrative keeping track of other Schuyler siblings, nieces and nephews, plus Hamilton children and grandchildren, and Church children and grandchildren. It's just that the ratio of interesting stuff to tedious stuff wasn't balanced as much in favor of interesting stuff as I'd like.

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

2026 Pulitzer prize biography.
Gouvenour Morris dies of an infection caused by his attempt to catheterize himself with a whale bone.

[MaryJo Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those that want to take a deep dive into Hamilton, this is a great book. It tells the story of the Schuyler sisters: Angelica Peggy and mostly Eliza. It also tells the story of the founding of a country t from a different perspective, not of the battles but of the domestic side.
Angelica married a British man (he was on the American side) who became rich during the war profiting from sales of goods to the army. She lived in England for many years and became influential in a woman's way to the war effort by befriending ambassadors, the Prince Regent, Thomas Jefferson and others. Eliza who lived to be 97 and had 8 children, saw many presidents come and go and her story reflects that change as the country changes. She ran an orphanage in New York and dedicated herself to telling Hamilton's story to give him his rightful place in history. Peggy does not have much of a part to play but their mother had 13 children and many other family members are in this story too. Their father Philip Schuyler was a rich and influential person in New York helping the war effort and the the forming of the government afterwards. The author uses primary sources and tells a good, worthwhile story.

[Lauren Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful full-life telling of the lives of the Elisa and Angelica Schuyler, their parents, husbands, and families. The audiobook delightfully separated tellings of their personal lives and the current political climate by shifting narrators. Having been quite obsessed with Hamilton, the musical, for several years, it was so cool to hear how many lines from the show come directly from letters from, to or about him. While the men tend to get the glory, the women are the permanent fixtures in these stories, especially Eliza. From her wealthy upbringing to her exceedingly long life, Hamilton could not have been the man he was in life or after death without Eliza. She was so much more than his wife, and it was wonderful to read so many more details about her life.

[Brieanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

10 stars! 20 stars! I loved this book.

I’ve always been drawn to history, but European history is more interesting to me. Reading Pride and Pleasure made me realize how little I know about our country’s history compared to the history of England, France, Italy, and Germany. Also, I miss reading about history, so I’m going to add more historical accounts to my reading list.

[Spencer Reads Everything · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amanda Vaill's Pride and Pleasure arrives at a moment when popular interest in the founding era, fueled in no small part by the Hamilton musical, has created both an appetite for serious biographical work on Alexander Hamilton's inner circle and a certain frustration with how little sustained attention the women in that circle have received. Vaill's solution is to treat the two Schuyler sisters, Angelica Schuyler Church and Elizabeth (Eliza) Schuyler Hamilton, as co-protagonists in a study spanning nearly a century, from their patrician Hudson Valley childhood to Eliza's death in 1854 at the age of ninety-seven. The result is a book that covers familiar historical ground while consistently reorienting the reader's line of sight, placing at the center of the founding story two women who have spent two hundred years in the margins.

The book is organized into three parts: "Pride," "Pleasure," and "Nameless Satisfactions". They correspond roughly to the sisters' rise, their years of shared entanglement with Hamilton, and their separate afterlives once he was gone. Vaill's research is formidable, drawing on family papers, court records, household account books, and period newspapers, and her narrative is strongest when it lets this archival material do the work. The chapters covering Eliza's years in Philadelphia as the wife of the Treasury Secretary are particularly rich, documenting her role not merely as domestic manager but as something closer to a working partner: she sat up through the night with Hamilton as he drafted his fifteen-thousand-word opinion on the constitutionality of the national bank, taking dictation, making fair copies, and commenting on the argument before he delivered it to Washington in the morning. That scene, reconstructed from letters and household records, is characteristic of Vaill's approach at its best.

The Angelica sections are equally absorbing, and in some ways more surprising. While Hamilton and Eliza were building a political career in Philadelphia, Angelica was living among the literary and political elite of London and Paris, cultivating friendships with Talleyrand, Gouverneur Morris, Maria Cosway, and the Juniper Hall circle of French emigres. More remarkably, she secretly organized a covert rescue mission for the imprisoned Marquis de Lafayette, coordinating through coded letters with a German agent named Justus Erich Bollmann and securing the quiet cooperation of the American minister Thomas Pinckney. The mission failed, almost comically, but the fact that Angelica conceived and ran it while maintaining the social surface of an ordinary London season is a detail that the standard Hamilton biography passes over in silence. Vaill takes it seriously, and the book is better for it.

The weakest sections are those devoted to parsing the Hamilton-Angelica correspondence for evidence of a romantic or physical relationship. Vaill is admirably honest that the evidence does not permit a firm conclusion, but the middle portion of the book returns to this question from multiple angles across several chapters without substantially advancing it, and the cumulative effect starts to feel less like historical inquiry and more like sophisticated gossip. Readers who find this material compelling will not be bothered; others may find themselves wishing the same pages had gone to Eliza's institutional work or Angelica's European years, which are consistently the more rewarding territory.

The book recovers most of its energy in the final section, which tracks Eliza's extraordinary widowhood. Widowed at forty-seven, with seven surviving children and crippling debts, she spent the next five decades building one of New York's first orphanages, lobbying Congress for Hamilton's papers, fighting legal battles over his correspondence, and pursuing what amounted to a sustained fifty-year archival campaign against everyone who tried to determine what history would say about her husband without her consent. The scene in which she corners the Librarian of Congress to reveal that Hamilton, not Washington, wrote the Farewell Address is one of the best in the book. Pride and Pleasure is not a flawless biography, but it is a serious and in many places surprising one, and the Eliza Hamilton it leaves the reader with is a much fuller and more formidable figure than the one most of us carried in.

For more of my thoughts, check out my video:
https://youtu.be/bZS8B6MNL-M
For more reviews, check out my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/@SpencerReadsE...

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A jaw dropping achievement in non-fiction that illuminates the very modern lives of the Schuyler sisters and their critical role during the formation of the United States. While the book features characters like Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and others, the most compelling characters are the Schuyler sisters themselves: complicated, witty, educated, and dynamic. This book reads like an HBO limited series and reminded me often of The Gilded Age.

[Tracy Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding book. Its scope goes far beyond the Schuyler sisters and Alexander Hamilton. It’s dense but very readable. It won - and deserves - the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2026. Amanda Vaill is an extraordinary storyteller.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eliza Hamilton is a stronger woman than I bc if I was in her shoes I would've become the joker.

Wdym your husband cheats on you....IN YOUR OWN HOUSE IN YOUR BED (RIP Eliza Hamilton you would've loved West End Girl by Lily Allen) multiple times and then instead of keeping it a secret he publishes a tell-all pamphlet b/c he values his own pride more than the pain he has inflicted on his family

Wdym your husband and YOUR SISTER have a semi-public flirtation for the entirety of your marriage and they are constantly writing suspicious letters to one another

Wdym your eldest son, Phillip, your darling boy dies in a duel DEFENDING YOUR STUPID HUSBAND'S HONOR....

Wdym your husband DIES IN A DUEL the same way that your son died 3 years earlier.......

Wdym your useless son puts the house you and your daughter live in up as collateral b/c he is deeply in debt

AND everyone loves your loser husband now but no one acknowledges that you lived until 18 fucking 54!!!! She was literally the last of her era.....

Eliza Hamilton was a freaking badass cause wdym she walked two miles back and forth to the Capitol Building everyday when she was in her late 80s?? And once she took over the orphanage she made it so that the orphans were actually treated well??? She fiercely campaigned for her husband's legacy to be remembered even though he lowkey sucked in his personal life

I really liked the author's stylistic choice to write in the present tense, that made everything that happened feel a lot more grounded and alive

[Julei · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fascinated listening to the audio. So well researched and I think I like learning history thru a biography (this one won the 2026 Pulitzer). What is amazing is that if these writings were not saved we would never have the play Hamilton and this book fills in the offstage bits and more. Such an interesting way to learn about the founding of America thru the eyes of Eliza Hamilton and her sister Angelica.

[Emily Ennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

who lives, who dies, who tells your story? amanda vaill, that’s who.

[Sandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been my companion for the past couple of months, and I didn’t want it to end. Thoroughly researched, the author brings the characters of the American Revolution to vivid life and reminds us that through the ages, we’ve all wrestled the same demons. So happy to learn more about the Schuyler sisters, and for these forgotten voices to be given light.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title indicates, the book focuses on the Schuyler sisters, in particular, Eliza, who married Alexander Hamilton, and her older sister, Angelica, who carried on a serious flirtation with Alexander. There's no evidence that the flirtation tipped over into sexual intimacy, but that doesn't stop Vaill from speculating. At the beginning of the book, I was irritated by Vaill's constant speculation, along the lines of, "She must have thought..." or "Wouldn't she have felt...". Stick to the historical record, woman, I thought. There's a lot of American history in the book that has been covered elsewhere, but I didn't know it, so that wasn't a problem. It is a very long book, however, and I confess to having skimmed in the middle. One thing she doesn't speculate about is why Hamilton, who clearly adored Eliza, was willing to risk his marriage for a sexual fling. In fact, Vaill suggests that Eliza was more upset about the flirtation with her sister than the actual affair with Maria Reynolds, and there is some evidence that what really bothered Eliza was not the affair, but Hamilton's publishing of the Reynolds Pamphlet. I enjoyed the last part of the book the most because it focuses on Eliza. Eliza was not just Hamilton's wife, but his collaborator. She was his amanuensis and gave him suggestions about wording. After his death, she tried hard to get the widow's pension which he had rejected. She needed the money to support her family. She also wanted Hamilton's reputation given the recognition it deserved. Some of Washington's supporters were furious at the idea that Hamilton had written Washington's Farewell Address. They thought it would diminish Washington, although Washington clearly didn't think so. What, they didn't have speech writers in the 18th century? Hamilton knew what Washington believed and knew the words that would best convey his message. That Washington was no speech writer or giver doesn't take away from his being, in the end, an inspiring general and a great president. After his death, Eliza really came into her own, with her advocacy for orphans. She lived to be 97 and she was amazingly active during most of her life. It's too bad that Vaill didn't shorten the book and focus more on Eliza from the start.

[Kelsea Abston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay this one definitely took me a while to trudge through, but it was pretty interesting on the whole! I loved how the focus of the book was more on the Schuyler sisters--specifically Angelica and Eliza--than the Hamilton-forward focus we normally see. Even as the homemakers that women were expected to be during the time, Angelica and Eliza were both so different in how they went about that. Angelica was more focused on her presence in high society, while Eliza was more industrious and involved in the BTS of politics, economics, etc.

I was also compelled by the fact that the book didn't stop at Alexander Hamilton's death. It continued on to detail Eliza's life afterwards. From building the orphanage and helping to fund the Washington Monument to holding her own against the foremost politicians of the age, Eliza was a force to be reckoned with. I'm glad that Pride and Pleasure exhibited that.

Also, can we talk about Angelica?! She had every man fauning over her--Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, random French men...not to mention, SHE WAS MARRIED. I feel like in Hamilton, Alexander is portrayed as the one making all the advances. NO, ANGELICA WAS JUST AS INVOLVED. For the 17/1800s, the letters between Angelica and all the different men were VERY FLIRTY. We also got the in-depth story behind "in a letter I received from you two weeks ago / I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase / It changed the meaning. Did you intend this? / One stroke and you've consumed my waking days / it says: My dearest Angelica / with a comma after 'dearest.'" The way a single comma became a WHOLE thing between Hamilton and Angelica is wild.

Anyways, all of this to say, this was very enjoyable for the history nerd (and Hamilton fan) in me. A slower read, for sure, but still compelling.

[Nicole Perkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amanda Vaill’s book “Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution” is an excellent account of the American Revolution, the events leading up to it, and the years after, with a focus on one of the foremost families of the time. Angelica, Elizabeth, and Margarita Schuyler were associated with (and married to) some of the most influential people involved with this country’s rise to independence. I have little interest in American history (mostly because it’s an on-going saga of privileged people behaving in appalling ways and doing their best to crush people seen as “less than”); however, Vaill’s book is attention-grabbing, informative, and fast-moving, not so fast that readers are confronted with confusing timelines, but fast enough that you don’t have time to get bored while reading of the various battles, meetings, and political appointments of the key players (all men, of course). It would be interesting to see what the Schuyler sisters would have been if they lived in later centuries; in the eighteenth century they could only be “helpmeets,” overseeing the house, tending to the children, and sparkling at social events geared toward advancing their husbands’ careers. In the nineteenth century they could have been suffragettes, and politicians in the twentieth century and today.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. I'm happy that this recently won the Pulitzer. I adore Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton, but I've thought for a long time that Angelica and Eliza Schuyler should have their own biography. And now they do, along with Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution, which I read right before this. This book is definitely more thorough, and not just because it's about two sisters (and kind of the whole Schuyler family) instead of one. I'm surprised the book just about Angelica didn't mention that as a child, her family called her Ann, for instance. If not for the musical, they wouldn't be household names, but they were both pretty interesting people who interacted with so many important Revolutionary War-era figures.

One thing- this family kept reusing the same first names over and over. Especially Philip! I knew the Hamiltons had a second son named Philip after their first son Philip died, but GEEZ, there were eight Schuyler siblings who survived to adulthood and I think almost all of them had sons named Philip! Did no one ever say, "Okay, I think we have enough Philips in this family, this is getting confusing"?

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this incredible dual biography of the famous Schuyler sisters, Amanda Vaill explores the fascinating lives of Angelica Schuyler Church and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton in this densely packed and informative new release. Following their shared childhood as Hudson Valley aristocrats and their rejection of society’s expectations for their marriages, the two women find themselves at the heart of the American Revolution. Angelica eloped with a war profiteer and lived the high political life abroad and in New York, while Eliza married penniless aide-de-camp Alexander Hamilton whose political career and controversies challenged their relationship. Packed with detail and incredibly informative, this book is dense but deeply enjoyable, and true fans of American history, women’s history, and Hamilton will love this deep dive into the Schuyler sisters’ lives. The juxtaposition of their two narrative and unique challenges they face really humanize the women, while Vaill expertly brings the political and social circumstances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to life to contextualize their lives. The incredible research and use of sources really demonstrate Vaill’s commitment to this project, and readers of all kinds will benefit from her incredible new release and the beautiful narrative structure and flow of their extraordinary lives at the center of the Revolution.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for the advance copy.

[Jane Considine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books like this one increase my admiration for authors who dig deep into a topic, seeming to leave no research stone unturned. The Schuyler sisters Angelica and Eliza rubbed elbows with many public figures in American history: George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James and Dollie Madison, John and Abagail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Ben Franklin, Lafayette, James Monroe, Aaron Burr, John Jay ... Angelica also spent several years in England and France and socialized on a grand scale with celebrities and royalty. Their father, Philip Schuyler, was one of the wealthy Hudson valley aristocrats who provided a genteel life as they were growing up and continued to have a role in their lives (and that of their offspring) as the matured, married and had families.
Addendum: my review overlooked the obvious; Eliza was married to Alexander Hamilton and Angelica was very fond of Hamilton, shared her thoughts with him on policy in development as the country and its leaders tried to find common ground ... and at times gave some observers the impression that there was more to their relationship as in-laws. Eliza was ever-loyal to Hamilton and championed him and his legacy long after his death.

[alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was highly informative but still digestible and easy to read. It could have been slightly shorter and tighter but overall it was very interesting. We all superficially know a bit of the backstory from Hamilton but this dives very deeply into the Schuyler sisters’ backgrounds and it was more wild than I knew (looking at you, Angelica). I also liked that when the focus was on the sisters, Alexander and the other important men of the time really took a backseat to the narrative, which doesn’t always happen.

[Laura Sterkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Spending this year of the semiquincentennial delving into the lives of the men and women whose lives tell the story of our nation’s founding. Amanda Vaill’s abundantly researched Pride and Pleasure focuses on Eliza Hamilton and the prodigious Schuyler-Hamilton family. For fans of Hamilton, this is all the background and a remarkable story of a first family. It is a worthy, albeit a lengthy, dense read. I learned so much.

[Lisa Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sometimes gets a little too bogged down in details, but overall it does what I assume it meant to do: present the Schuyler sisters as real, complicated people who lived full lives in a time of immense change. The important people around them are also portrayed complexly, leading to a view of history I don't feel like I've ever really seen before. I really liked getting to see what Eliza did with her 50 years beyond Hamilton, and finished the book in admiration of her intelligence and grit.