Book excerpt: For almost two centuries, historians have struggled to explain the extraordinary duel that killed Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, and ended Vice President Aaron Burr's political career. In A Fatal Friendship, the distinguished political scientist and writer Arnold Rogow argues that the roots of the fatal encounter lay not in Burr's (admittedly flawed) political and private conduct hut, rather, in Hamilton's conflicted history and character. Rogow's brilliant analysis changes and deepens our understanding of honor, politics, and friendship in the early American Republic. - Publisher.