By R. Kent Newmyer, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, N.Y., 226 pages, $28.99.
American history has its full share and then some of illustrious (or infamous) characters. High on any list of such personages belongs the name of Aaron Burr. A combat veteran of the Revolutionary War, a brilliant and successful New York trial lawyer and the country’s third vice president, Burr gained notoriety by killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel at Weehawken, N.J., in 1804. In “The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr,” Professor Kent Newmyer of the University of Connecticut tells in detail how his subject escaped the hangman’s noose in a proceeding that has left its mark to this day on our constitutional law.
