I am pleased to announced today that the book, Rush On, Boys: Hamilton at War (print version) is now shipping globally. The official release date is tomorrow but you can purchase it now. The Kindle version will be released next week.

And the audiobook version is now being recorded in Scotland by veteran BBC narrator, James Gillies. Please click on the advance audio excerpt below.

Rush On Boys, Audiobook excerpt, read by James Gillies by Robert Child

Gillies grew up in Scotland where he still resides and he is recording the narration only six (6) miles from the county line of Ayrshire which is ancestral home of Alexander Hamilton. Gillies knows the Hamilton story well and he related to me a tale which may or may not be true but both he and I agree it is fascinating.

Gillies, "As a child I was taught that Hamilton's ancestors came from Ayrshire, a county whose border is only some six miles from here. In Ayrshire is a place called Dollar. It is a compact town these days, but once upon a time it was primarily known as the site of the Scots' Royal Mint, and the coins made there were known, not surprisingly, as 'dollars'. In the fullness of time, the dollar coin was replaced by a currency known as the 'pound Scots' and new dollars were no longer minted. However, as they were made of solid silver, they continued in circulation, far beyond our shores, disseminated by sailors and fishermen as they moved from port to port. Eventually many of them were to be found in the hands of the privateers and other ne-er do wells who made their living around the West Indies.

As a result, goes the story, Hamilton would have been utterly familiar with the dollar, both from shared family memories of Scotland and from the turbulent trade which moved through the Caribbean as he was growing up. The story goes that when Hamilton and the others were discussing the establishment of a new American currency, there were strongly argued objections to creating an American Pound due to its unwelcome associations with the former colonial power. Hamilton, it is said, reached back into his memory and suggested the name of the coin associated with his family's former home, and thus the Dollar was reborn. As I said, this latter part of the story might be apocryphal, but I find it quite interesting."

And I agree. Look forward to the audio book release during the first part of March with James Gillie's stirring narration. He truly brings Hamilton's war time story in Rush On, Boys to life.