Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-259) and index.

Before the clash
An old friend's bombshell
The mounting anger
The radical conservative
Aggressive lobbying
Thoughts of breaking up
Jefferson's awakening
A country without a capital
Doubters and believers
Nearing a decision on the capital
That day on the street
Dinner at Secretary Jefferson's
The Philadelphia story
Doubts settled, doubts revived
Hamilton the unstoppable?
Before the fall
From brilliance to disaster
The disappearing cabinet
One heart and one mind
The Jefferson factor
Recipes from Monticello's kitchen
Alexander Hamilton's letter to new coast guard officials

"It was 1790, and Thomas Jefferson and one of his dinner guests, James Madison, were determined to work out a political compromise critical to the nation's future with their third dinner companion (and political opponent), Alexander Hamilton. This gathering around Jefferson's celebrated table involved nothing less than the creation of the young nation's finances, foreign relations and the eventual location of its capital. The dinner's results? An agreement that, Congress willing, the new government would assume the states' war debts, issue bonds to fund the national debt and make the Potomac's banks the capital's permanent site. Congress agreed. Cerami (Jefferson's Great Gamble) presents a fast-paced narrative of an event well-known but never told so brightly, nor at such unnecessary length. While Cerami puts the dinner-table agreement at his story's center, it was but one of a number of seismic events, acts and decisions of the 1790s. Cerami slights many of those when he's not giving us too much detail about other minor ones, such as Jefferson's cooking recipes and a short disquisition (and a long document) on Hamilton's role in the Coast Guard's founding."--Publishers Weekly