Benjamin West, Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, ca. 1816. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Simon & Schuster
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Printer, scientist, diplomat, founder: the first American entrepreneur.
$25.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Walter Isaacson
- Publisher
- Simon & Schuster
- Published
- January 2004
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
The Founder Who Kept Shop
Among the founders of the American republic, Benjamin Franklin is the one who made his own money, and Walter Isaacson's 2003 biography treats that as the key to him. Franklin was a printer first, then a publisher, postmaster, scientist, inventor and diplomat, and he alone signed the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with France, the peace with Britain and the Constitution.
Isaacson writes him as the original American type, practical, sociable, self-improving and slightly amused by his own performance. The book became a bestseller and remains the most read modern life of Franklin, a portrait of the tradesman's virtues operating at the founding of a nation.
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