Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

(Paperback)

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In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklins life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, Americas 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 Richards Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nations alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklins amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.

Reviews

The Washington Post Book World The most readable full-length Franklin biography available.
The New Yorker Energetic, entertaining, and worldly.
The New York Times In its common sense, clarity and accessibility, it is a fitting reflection of Franklin's sly pragmatism....This may be the book that most powerfully drives a new pendulum swing of the Franklin reputation.
The New York Times Book Review A thoroughly researched, crisply written, convincingly argued chronicle.

Author Bio

Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin,and Albert Einstein.He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor ofTime.He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. Visit him atIsaacson.Tulane.edu.