A fascinating, in-depth look at one of our founders...

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	• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster, 2004 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 200 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A fascinating, in-depth look at one of our founders...

Here we read a captivating story of the man we thought we knew, and have heard so much about. The author does an excellent job of introducing the reader to the character, personae, and accomplishments of Ben Franklin. A balanced and well-written description of a brilliant, yet at times shallow person. A wonderful introduction to our founder, inventor, and elder statesman.

Big Ben Bio

The last few years have witnessed a spate of biographies on our founding fathers: George Washington by James Flexner (1994), Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis (1998), John Adams by David McCullough (2002), James Madison by Jack Rakove (2001) and Gary Wills (2002), and Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (2004). Ben Franklin (1706-1790) is the subject of at least three important new works, this one by Isaacson, HW Brand's The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2002), and Gordon Wood's The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004). Franklin was a paradox in many ways. He was more pragmatic than profound, and yet he might have been our most influential diplomat and founding father (the only one to sign all four of our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with France, the peace agreement with Britain, and the Constitution. See page 459). He extolled the virtue of honoring God by doing good to your fellow man, but he estranged himself from nearly everyone in his immediate family. He exalted the modesties befitting the emerging middle class and disdained extravagance, but was wealthy enough to retire at age 42 and held court with Voltaire and King Louis XVI. He was a deist of sorts famous for tolerance and yet one with with a fervent belief in a benevolent God. I was intrigued to learn that Franklin was an ardent admirer of the famous preacher George Whitefield. Nearly half the books that Franklin printed between 1739 and 1741 were either by or about Whitefield, and for forty years, until Whitefield died, they corresponded. In his closing pages Isaacson reviews the ebb and flow of Franklin's reputation. At 500 pages this is a long book, but an eminently readable one about a fascinating person.

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An American Original

This is a well written biography of an American original, Benjamin Franklin. Isaacson begins with some context (page 2): "He was, during his eighty-four-year-long life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical, though not most profound, political thinkers." The author goes on to say (page 2): ". . .the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity."

The book traces his life from start to finish. It does not hide the fact that he was a fairly poor "husband" and father, watching his own son become a Tory and essentially giving up on him as a consequence. It notes episodes where he may have gotten caught up in his own persona and image.

Nonetheless, he was an original and someone who contributed much to the development of an independent American nation. Part of this is his efforts to engage in self-improvement. A list of "virtues," portrayed on pages 89-90 illustrates. Here, he noted "with an endearing simplicity" key virtues to adhere to, such as temperance ("Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation"), silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, etc.

He was someone who did great work as a publisher, as an inventor and scientist, as a public servant. For instance, the book notes that he was a creator of the "matching grant," a way of making scarce dollars stretch further (page 148). As postmaster, appointed when the colonies were still under British rule, he institute a number of reforms, ending up cutting delivery time of the mail, creating home delivery of mail, and so on. And being entrepreneurial to the core, he also used this opportunity to advance other of his interests (providing jobs for friends, improving his publishing network, invigorating the American Philosophical Society, and making some money in the process).

He spent considerable time abroad, in London earlier and in Paris later, as a diplomat and representative of the colonies and later the United States. He was a player in the Continental Congress and was a member of the committee assigned to craft a Declaration of Independence. Very late in life, he served at the Constitutional Convention, although in declining health.

All in all, this is a book that depicts Franklin as a complex human being. As noted in the introductory paragraph of this review, he was aware of who he was, how people saw him, and he worked to maintain and develop that persona. And what a persona it was!

For someone wishing an accessible and highly readable biography of Franklin, this is an excellent choice.

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excellent biography

Mr. Isaacson provides the reader with an immensely detailed history of Mr. Franklin's life. One of the most engaging books that I have read in the past several years, he provides tremendous detail on Ben's life. Mr. Isaacson, more than some biographers, ventures, at times, to provide analyses of his strategy. I cannot say enough good things about this book. He presents Mr. Franklin accurately. At times, I concluded, that he was a brilliant and humble person; at times, well, I was disappointed in some areas of his life, such as family, etc. I suppose that more might have been written about his early life, perhaps his years in England, France, the conflicts and compromises in 1776 and 1789 ... Of course, there are countless books on most of those topics, already... Wonderful resource!!! Well worth the purchase price, given all of the enjoyment that I obtained from it!!!

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Here is Ben Franklin the Pragmatist

I am interested in comparing the 5 best biographies of Benjamin Franklin that have been written (thus far) in the new millennia, emphasizing Isaacson's account.

THE BEST 5 BIOGRAPHIES ARE (in order of publication date)
Edmund S. Morgan's Benjamin Franklin (Yale Nota Bene S.)
H. W. Brands's The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Gordon S. Wood's The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
Jerry Weinberger's Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought (American Political Thought)

The first 4 of these biographies are presented as in the typical historically (and chronologically) biographical approach. Isaacson's biography of Franklin presents the thesis that Franklin was more the pragmatist than the previous two historians acknowledged and the subsequent writers were willing to confirm.

There are 24 pictures in Morgan's book, no pictures in Brands's book, 32 pictures in Isaacson's book, 25 pictures in Wood's book, and no pictures in Weinberger's book.
I am not going to write about how great Franklin was or what he did (he was great and he did so much). I want to write primarily about how each of these authors portrays Franklin's character differently by highlighting different aspects of his life.

In London (1725) Franklin wrote "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain," which seemed to show that Franklin was a young radical Deist. Later, when the pamphlet was reprinted in Boston, Franklin became a social outcast of sorts and he wrote that he was "inclined to leave Boston" because people were calling him "an infidel or atheist." When Franklin fled Boston he was 17 years old. He later wrote about that pamphlet that "I began to suspect that this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful."
Later, after becoming rich from his printing presses, writings, and scientific discoveries, Franklin became a statesman, diplomat, Founding Father, and icon.
At the end of his life he wrote his "Autobiography," where Franklin said that he "never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity, that he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service to God was the doing of good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded either here or hereafter; these I esteemed the essentials of every religion".

Isaacson says, "Above all, Franklin's beliefs were driven by pragmatism" (pg. 87). Isaacson says that Franklin is the "founding father who winks at us" (pg. 2). But his wink shutters over a pragmatist's eye. Isaacson would focus on Franklin's clause, "that the most acceptable service to God was the doing of good to man." However, Morgan would say that "charity...was actually the guiding principle of Franklin's life" (Morgan, pg. 24). All the other biographers manifest lesser focused forms of Isaacson's thesis that Franklin "helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism" (pg. 2). Weinberger's Franklin is explicit rejection of the pragmatist-Franklin-thesis. Weinberger thinks that Franklin is purposely contradicting himself to play with his readers...to reveal a Franklin that would have possibly be called again an "infidel or atheist" if he had not cloaked his message.
Brands would agree with Weinberger and Isaacson by saying that Franklin was both a skeptic and a pragmatist, but Brands does not pursue that thesis that there is some interrelatedness to a skeptical-Franklin and a pragmatist-Franklin very far (only two pages actually; see Brands, 94-95). Isaacson focuses on the Franklin who, it's argued, helped found American pragmatism (see pg. 480 for most elaborate reference), Wood focuses on the political Franklin who had to be "Americanized" because Franklin too often wanted to be part of the old gentry class and this was evident in some of his politicking (in fact, Isaacson hoped that "detailed throughout this book" was Franklin as a " proud member of the middle class" which Isaacson argued against Wood's continuous - but less developed - thesis of Franklin in "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" see Isaacson, pg. 528 note 26) , Weinberger calls Franklin a "radical skeptic" and says he was a political "Baconian."

Isaacson's thesis, as mentioned earlier, is that Franklin's intellectual life is the development of a somewhat proto-pragmatism. Weinberger is Isaacson's most determined critic.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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