Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.67 (941 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B004VLETYM |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 410 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-07-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the 21st century.. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people". Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. America's first great publicist, he was consciously trying to create a n
An excellent biography Benjamin Franklin was a complicated personality whose political views changed over time. Franklin used Greek Philosophy as stepping stones from which he derived his first views on politics, virtues, and moral pragmatism but he shaped and modified these views as he aged. It is probably impossible to capture the essence of Benjamin Franklin's na. Franklin would have appreciated the Pope’s thoughts on our poor stewardship of the natural world and given his ability I didn’t plan it this way, but choosing to read Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson when I did was providential. While reading it, Pope Francis visited the United States and Speaker of the House Boehner announced his resignation. I think my timing was providential because I think that given his interest in the sciences. "A Complicated Man for an Extraordinary Time" according to J.B. Hughes. Recently, I have been spending time exploring the lives of America's founding fathers. Benjamin Franklin was someone that I thought I knew. In grade school we learn about the pithy Philladelphia boy who rose from poverty to wealth, flew a kite in a rain storm, and became an immortal figure in the "Pantheon" of the American founders. However, I