Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin

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 Franklin's 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, America's 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 Richard's Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation's 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 Franklin's amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.
Chronicles the founding father's life and his multiple careers as a shopkeeper, writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, business strategist, and political leader, while showing how his faith in the wisdom of the common citizen helped to forge an American national identity based on the virtues of its middle class. 150,000 first printing.
Presents a portrait of Benjamin Franklin as a scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, business strategist, and statesman while tracing his life as one of America's Founding Fathers.
<b>In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of <i>Einstein </i>and <i>Steve Jobs</i>, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.</b><br><br>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 Franklin&#8217;s 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, America&#8217;s 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 <i>Poor Richard&#8217;s Almanac</i> and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation&#8217;s alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.<br> <br> In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin&#8217;s amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.