The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101200901
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
“I cannot remember ever reading a work of history and biography that is quite so fluent, so perfectly composed and balanced . . .” —The New York Sun “Exceptionally rich perspective on one of the most accomplished, complex, and unpredictable Americans of his own time or any other.” —The Washington Post Book World From the most respected chronicler of the early days of the Republic—and winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes—comes a landmark work that rescues Benjamin Franklin from a mythology that has blinded generations of Americans to the man he really was and makes sense of aspects of his life and career that would have otherwise remained mysterious. In place of the genial polymath, self-improver, and quintessential American, Gordon S. Wood reveals a figure much more ambiguous and complex—and much more interesting. Charting the passage of Franklin’s life and reputation from relative popular indifference (his death, while the occasion for mass mourning in France, was widely ignored in America) to posthumous glory, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin sheds invaluable light on the emergence of our country’s idea of itself.

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143035282
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594200199
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
Wood scrutinizes the less typically American traits possessed by Franklin--such as his longtime loyalty to the Crown--and why he still became one of the Revolution's necessary men.

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143035282
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Benjamin Franklin

Author: Edmund Sears Morgan
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300101621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Draws on Franklin's extensive writings to provide a portrait of the statesman, inventor, and Founding Father.

Benjamin Franklin

Author: Arthur Bernon Tourtellot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Book Description
An examination of the formative years of Benjamin Franklin and of the atmosphere of Boston in the early 18th century which influenced Franklin's development.

Benjamin Franklin Unmasked

Author: Jerry Weinberger
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700615849
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
Moral paragon, public servant, founding father; scoundrel, opportunist, womanizing phony: There are many Benjamin Franklins. Now, as we celebrate the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, Jerry Weinberger reveals the Franklin behind the many masks and shows that the real Franklin was far more remarkable than anyone has yet discovered. Taking the Autobiography as the key to Franklin's thought, Weinberger argues that previous assessments have not yet probed to the bottom of Ben's famous irony and elusiveness. While others take the self-portrait as an elder statesman's relaxed and playful retrospection, Weinberger unveils it as the window to Franklin's deepest reflections on God, virtue, justice, equality, natural rights, love, the good life, the modern technological project, and the place and limits of reason in politics and human experience. Along the way, Weinberger explores Franklin's ribald humor, usually ignored or toned down by historians and critics, and shows it to be charming-and philosophic. Following Franklin's rhetorical twists and turns, Weinberger discovers a serious thinker who was profoundly critical of religion, moral virtue, and political ideals and whose grasp of human folly constrained his hopes for enlightenment and political reform. This close and amusing reading of Franklin portrays a scrupulous dialectical philosopher, humane and wise, but more provocative and disturbing than even the most hardboiled interpreters have taken Franklin to be-a freethinking critic of Enlightenment freethinking, who played his moral and theological cards very close to the vest. Written for general readers who want to delve more deeply into the mind of a great man and great American, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked shows us a massively powerful intellect lurking behind the leather-apron countenance. This lively, witty, and revelatory book is indispensable for those who want to meet the real Franklin.

Information to Those who Would Remove to America

Author: Benjamin Franklin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 24

Book Description

Benjamin Franklin in London

Author: George Goodwin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300220243
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Book Description
An account of Franklin's British years.

Revolutionary Characters

Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101201665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, "What made these men great?" and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter. The life of each—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine—is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.