Benjamin Franklin : An American Life
by Walter Isaacson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Walter IsaacsonReader: Boyd Gaines
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 2003-07-01
ISBN: 0743533658
Number of pages: 7
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Book Reviews of Benjamin Franklin : An American Life
Book Review: Ben Franklin, the good and the bad
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a fan of narrative nonfiction history, so I was a bit offset when I started reading Benjamin Franklin. It's not really a narrative biography, but by the end of the first page, I didn't care.
The book is well written by Walter Isaacson and it is about a fascinating man. I knew very little about Benjamin Franklin when I began this book. Not so now.
Isaacson looks at the many facets of the man's life--printer, author, politician, diplomat, revolutionary, inventor, scientist. Franklin was a man who defined his time and defined America, as can be seen by the fact that's he's the only American who signed all 4 crucial documents in America's founding.
Isaacson also looks at Franklin's faults and contradictions. Though Isaacson tries to figure out how they could exist in Franklin, he never quite manages to get inside Franklin's head.
All in all, it was a very enjoyable read. I came away with a new appreciation of Franklin.
Summary of Benjamin Franklin : An American Life
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us -- an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings.In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours.
The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.
In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.
Benjamin Franklin, writes journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, was that rare Founding Father who would sooner wink at a passer-by than sit still for a formal portrait. What's more, Isaacson relates in this fluent and entertaining biography, the revolutionary leader represents a political tradition that has been all but forgotten today, one that prizes pragmatism over moralism, religious tolerance over fundamentalist rigidity, and social mobility over class privilege. That broadly democratic sensibility allowed Franklin his contradictions, as Isaacson shows. Though a man of lofty principles, Franklin wasn't shy of using sex to sell the newspapers he edited and published; though far from frivolous, he liked his toys and his mortal pleasures; and though he sometimes gave off a simpleton image, he was a shrewd and even crafty politician. Isaacson doesn't shy from enumerating Franklin's occasional peccadilloes and shortcomings, in keeping with the iconoclastic nature of our time--none of which, however, stops him from considering Benjamin Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age," and one of the most admirable of any era. And here's one bit of proof: as a young man, Ben Franklin regularly went without food in order to buy books. His example, as always, is a good one--and this is just the book to buy with the proceeds from the grocery budget. --Gregory McNamee
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