A thoroughly researched, crisply written, convincingly argued chronicle.- The New York Times Book Review
# Paperback: 608 pages
# Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 4, 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 074325807X
# ISBN-13: 978-0743258074
Isaacson can really combine a superb subject matter with information and entertainment. His character, Benjamin Franklin, was a thinker with a broad democratic sensibility, representing a tradition in politics which gives importance to pragmatism over moral ism and social mobility over class privilege. He pokes fun of the modern day fundies and creationists many a times, and mostly in ways they cannot comprehend. Contradictory to the image of an old man with a wire trim glass with his hair combed over, and the famous picture of a man flying a kite in a thunderstorm, Isaacson portrays the amazing depth and breadth of this man. According to Isaacson, Ben Franklin was a man who continuously reinvented himself in more ways than one, and in ways where there was no equal to him.
A scientist, craftsman, writer, publisher, comic, sage, ladies’ man, statesman, diplomat and inventor – Franklin not only wore many hats, and the writer describes them all well. This is one biography that rates high of all, and which deserves 5 stars if not more.
Synopsis
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson shows how the most fascinating of America’s founders helped define our national character.
In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin’s life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the spunky runaway apprentice who became, during his 84-year life, America’s best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard’s Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation’s alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.
Above all, Isaacson shows how Franklin’s unwavering faith in the wisdom of the common citizen and his instinctive appreciation for the possibilities of democracy helped to forge an American national identity based on the virtues and values of its middle class.
About the Author
Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Kissinger: A Biography and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.