Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

WHAT I LIKED:- Benjamin Franklin. He is an absolutely amazing person, whose splendid character shines forth in his own writings and the descriptions of his activities. Even one of Franklin’s famous rivals, John Adams, later in life said, “There is scarce a scratch of his pen that is not worth preserving.”- The narrative style approach. This isn’t a boring book that simply chronicles what happened and when. It is like a story, and despite being so comprehensive, it doesn’t seem long enough. It gets more and more exciting as you go through it, even showing hints of a spy novel at one point. While I typically don’t read biographies more than once, this is a book I will likely read many times again.- The technical detail. As Franklin was an inventor, the author could have been excused for glossing over many of the technical details of his inventions. But he doesn’t do that. The author presents the information in a way that any person can understand. It makes the reader appreciate Franklin all that much more.- Time travel. This book takes you back to 18th century America, and you feel very close to the many famous personalities who helped in forming the country. The author has done a wonderful job in making something so distant seem so accessible. You get a taste for England and France from that time period as well.- Reference material. In reading this book, you come across a lot of names. There are many people who had the pleasure to meet Franklin, and one thing I started doing in the course of reading was looking up many of these people. I was surprised to find out how famous and influential they were. And wouldn’t you know it, the author provides a nice glossary at the end which gives a brief description of each character. There are some nice photos and paintings included as well.WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:- Snide commentary. There are many, many instances of where ill motives are erroneously ascribed to Franklin. The author many times attacks Franklin’s own autobiography, saying he wasn’t entirely honest. And these criticisms are of minor points, such as the way Franklin characterized his own parents. I would have preferred the author save his judgments for a separate chapter instead of interweaving it throughout the narrative.- Gossip column/Tabloid reporting. There is one section of this book in particular which was done in very poor taste. Without giving away too many details, imagine if your worst enemy hacked your email account, took your personal correspondence and then sent it to others. And then imagine that this enemy put their own comments in parentheses after each paragraph. This describes a major section of this book, dealing particularly with Franklin’s time in England. The author obviously invested much time and effort in writing this book, and so he has a right to formulate opinions. But the manner in which they were inserted in some places was very off-putting, due particularly to the fact that I considered the negative comments to be completely off base.- Chastising of Franklin’s character. By all accounts, Franklin was a stand-up guy who had affection for everyone. Perhaps in having little to criticize, the author decided to take issue with the fact that Franklin was friendlier and more open in his dealings with his friends than he was with his family. The author wants you to think that Franklin liked his friends more than his family. But in reality, the level of interaction doesn’t necessarily equate to affection. We make friends with equals, whereas our family members are either our dependents or our superiors. We treat dependents differently than we do friends. The famous Indian philosopher Chanakya said that disciples and children should never be coddled; only criticized. This is for their own good. Franklin seemed to follow a similar approach, though he wasn’t very harsh. To me the way he treated his family is actually a sign of his great affection for them, and not the other way around.VERDICT:A lot of the commentary I didn’t like had footnotes to it, suggesting that perhaps the author was merely passing on the opinions of previous historians. Despite the few negatives, this is an excellent book. I first read the “A Benjamin Franklin Reader” book by the same author, and that interested me enough to purchase this one. Franklin wrote and did so much that one book could never do him justice, but this is a great start. I give many thanks to the author for taking the time to compile this wonderful and insightful work.

Many years back I endeavored to read a full-length biography on each of the Founding Fathers. For most, I had multiple options and several had undisputed “definitive” single volumes available, such as McCullough on Adams and Chernow on Hamilton. For Benjamin Franklin, Carl Van Doren’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winner was still considered the best, but I found it tedious and dry. Van Doren had somehow taken the most affable and relatable Founding Father and turned him into a moldy museum piece. The Washington Post was clearly taking an aim at Van Doren’s classic when, in a 2003 review of Isaacson’s “Benjamin Franklin,” they called it “the most readable full-length Franklin biography available.” I must wholeheartedly agree. Isaacson’s avuncular Franklin comes to life, bursting with humor and sagacity in equal measure.Isaacson develops four themes in the life of Franklin; each is quintessentially American. First is an almost reflexive resistance to arbitrary authority. Beginning with the bucking of his printer apprenticeship to his older brother, James, in Boston in his teenage years and ending with his leadership in the American Revolution as an octogenarian, Franklin always bridled against heavy hands of authority. Almost from birth, Franklin retained what Isaacson calls an “inbred resistance to established authority.”That is not to say that Franklin was a natural born revolutionary. Quite the contrary, according to Isaacson. To begin with, in addition to hostility to authority, Franklin also possessed an equally strong aversion to disorder and mob behavior. In the early 1760s, Franklin was “an enthusiastic and unabashed royalist,” Isaacson says, and prior to the 1770s remained “a proud and loyal Englishman, one who sought to strengthen his majesty’s empire rather than seek independence for the American colonies.” That loyalty was steadily eroded as the British tightened their grip on colonial life. It was, Isaacson writes, a steady collection of “personal slights, dashed hopes, betrayals, and the accretion of hostile British acts” that finally pushed Franklin into the rebel camp.Second, Franklin maintained an unshakable belief in the value of merit, virtue, and hard work. He was his own best example of the good things that come to those who work hard and apply their talents to useful endeavors. The breadth of Franklin’s contribution is eye-popping. He developed significant improvements to such critical eighteenth-century devices as the heating stove and street lamps. He designed an entirely new musical instrument, the “armonica.” He organized the development of major institutions that still exist today, such as the University of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, and Pennsylvania Hospital. And, of course, as everyone knows he invented the lightning rod and bifocals. For all of his fame and myriad achievements in science, literature, and industry, Isaacson is quick to point out that Franklin’s ability was of a unique, yet almost quotidian variety. For instance, “Franklin would never develop into a rigorous, first-rank philosopher…he was more comfortable exploring practical thoughts and real-life situations.” Nor was he exactly a first-rate scientist. “Ingenious as he was,” Isaacson writes, “[Franklin] was no Galileo or Newton. He was a practical experimenter more than a systematic theorist.” Indeed, Isaacson concludes, “In science [Franklin] was more an Edison than a Newton, in literature more a Twain than a Shakespeare, in philosophy more a Dr. Johnson than a Bishop Berkeley, and in politics more a Burke than a Locke.”Third, Franklin believed that one can best serve God by serving your fellow man. Thus, while he promoted “hard work, individual enterprise, frugality, and self-reliance” on the one hand, he also pushed for “civic cooperation, social compassion, and voluntary community improvement schemes,” on the other. Such “good works” were at the foundation of his spiritual life and self-identity. Raised in Puritan Boston and established in Quaker Philadelphia, Franklin nevertheless firmly believed “A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian.”Finally, Franklin’s unique blend of intelligence, wit, compromise, and bonhomie made him, in Isaacson’s estimation, “the greatest American diplomat of all time.” He was “America’s first great image maker and public relations master.” No other American in the 1780s was more famous than Franklin and arguably no one understood all thirteen colonies better. Owing to his time in Boston and Philadelphia and his responsibilities as postmaster, Franklin was “one of the few to view America as a whole,” Isaacson writes. He was “the most traveled and least parochial of colonial leaders.” Likewise, he pursued a unique American foreign policy mixed realism and idealism, what Isaacson calls “the warp and woof of a resilient foreign policy.”In closing, Franklin was – and in many ways still is – the personification of America: “Its cracker-barrel humor and wisdom; its technological ingenuity; its pluralistic tolerance; its ability to weave together individualism and community cooperation; its philosophical pragmatism; its celebration of meritocratic mobility; the idealistic streak ingrained in its foreign policy; and the Main Street virtues that serve as the foundation for its civic values.” Or as the great historian Frederick Jackson Turner put it in 1887: “[Franklin’s] life is the story of American common sense in its highest form applied to business, to politics, to science, to diplomacy, to religion, to philanthropy.”It has been argued that Americans are either natural born haters or lovers of Franklin. I suspect that both Isaacson and I are the latter, and this is a biography for those in that happy camp.

One of the best bio.

Foi um dos melhores livros que li até agora. Bem escrito e conta a história de uma pessoa além do seu tempo.

Klare Kaufempfehlung.

Good

The book just takes to the world almost two to three centuries ago. Brilliantly written and superb stirytelling of the life of Benjamin Franklin. It is a must read for history enthusiasts. Superbly portrayed his colourful life.