David Roll is a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP and founder of Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, a public interest organization that provides pro bono legal
services to social entrepreneurs around the world. He was awarded the Purpose Prize Fellowship by Civic Ventures in 2009.
His new book is
The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler.
One of
Roll's five best books on the most influential presidential advisers, as told to the
Wall Street Journal:
Alexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow (2004)
Alexander Hamilton was the most influential presidential adviser in the history of the American republic. Having impressed Gen. George Washington as his ablest staff officer during the Revolution, Hamilton offered the fateful advice, backed by a campaign of persuasive argument and deft seduction, that Washington should—indeed must—stand for 
the presidency. "No other man can sufficiently unite the public opinion or can give the requisite weight to the office in the commencement of the government," he wrote. Hamilton, of course, knew that Washington's agreement to become president would be his own ticket to power and influence in the new government. As Ron Chernow observes in this fresh, balanced biography, which captures Hamilton more fully and beautifully than any of its predecessors, "Hamilton needed George Washington as president no less than America did." Under Washington, continues Chernow, Hamilton, as the first Treasury secretary, would restore the nation's credit and lay "the groundwork for both liberal democracy and capitalism."
Read about
another book on Roll's list.
--Marshal Zeringue
services to social entrepreneurs around the world. He was awarded the Purpose Prize Fellowship by Civic Ventures in 2009.
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