Ezra's Bookshelf

Benjamin Franklin

by Walter Isaacson · 608 pages · ~11 hrs

Biography & MemoirHistory

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Walter Isaacson's biography captures Benjamin Franklin in full: the printer who became a scientist, the scientist who became a diplomat, the diplomat who became an icon. Isaacson traces Franklin from his runaway apprenticeship to his strategic marriage to Deborah Read, his electrical experiments that made him famous across Europe, his decades as colonial agent in London, his crucial role securing French support for the Revolution, and his final years as elder statesman at the Constitutional Convention. The book is candid about Franklin's personal life: his illegitimate son William, whom he later disowned; his lengthy separation from Deborah; his flirtations with French women in his seventies. Isaacson argues that Franklin's distinctive contribution was applying practical, empirical habits of mind to politics and social improvement. His journalism, civic organizations, and diplomatic success all reflected a temperament that tested ideas against reality rather than defending abstractions. For understanding how American national character was shaped by this singular figure, Isaacson provides an accessible and comprehensive account.

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