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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life - Walter Isaacson (CD)
Title: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Title: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Author: Walter Isaacson Genre: Biographies & Memoirs / American Presidents Format: CD, 6 CDs, 7 Hrs. 30 Mins. Synopsis: 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 bestselling 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. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was 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. 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. In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century. Review: Choice (January 1, 2004) New biographies of Franklin are appearing as often as diet books, although the public has less obvious need of the former. This rendition is a birth-to-death work that treats the many sides of Franklin--printer, scientist, politician, diplomat, and family man--a formidable job. The author believes Franklin is the sort of person one would enjoy a beer with after work, and that is the Franklin one finds in this biography. Isaacson commends Franklin for his modeling of middle-class, bourgeois, public-spirited American character. The virtues shown here are the same ones found in Franklin's own autobiography: reasonableness, moderation, equanimity, practicality, and self-confidence. Isaacson does not doubt the success and the desirability of these virtues in the US. He has moderately researched the topic, reading Franklin's own writings and his other biographers, and writes engagingly; the book is a good choice for anyone who will enjoy only one biography of Franklin. But the biography uncovers almost nothing new about Franklin and broaches no new opinions about him. Isaacson read few collateral materials, mostly in manuscript, about Franklin or his times. This lack of in-depth work renders the author's sweeping judgments glib and of little i