Benjamin Franklin (Lives and Legacies Series) - Softcover

Gaustad, Edwin S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195368703 ISBN 13: 9780195368703

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

The tenth and youngest son of a poor Boston soapmaker, Benjamin Franklin would rise to become, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "the greatest man and ornament of his age." In this short, engaging biography, historian Edwin S. Gaustad offers a marvelous portrait of this towering colonial figure, illuminating Franklin's character and personality.
Here is truly one of the most extraordinary lives imaginable, a man who, with only two years of formal education, became a printer, publisher, postmaster, philosopher, world-class scientist and inventor, statesman, musician, and abolitionist. Gaustad presents a chronological account of all these accomplishments, delightfully spiced with quotations from Franklin's own extensive writings. The book describes how the hardworking Franklin became at age 24 the most successful printer in Pennsylvania and how by 42, with the help of Poor Richard's Almanack, he had amassed enough wealth to retire from business. We then follow Franklin's next brilliant career, as an inventor and scientist, examining his pioneering work on electricity and his inventions of the Franklin Stove, the lightning rod, and bifocals, as well as his mapping of the Gulf Stream, a major contribution to navigation. Lastly, the book covers Franklin's role as America's leading statesman, ranging from his years in England before the Revolutionary War to his time in France thereafter, highlighting his many contributions to the cause of liberty. Along the way, Gaustad sheds light on Franklin's personal life, including his troubled relationship with his illegitimate son William, who remained a Loyalist during the Revolution, and Franklin's thoughts on such topics as religion and morality.
Written by a leading authority on colonial America, this compact biography captures in a remarkably small space one of the most protean lives in our nation's history.

About this title

About the Author

Edwin S. Gaustad is Professor of History and Religious Studies Emeritus at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of many books, including Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America, Church and State in America, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, and Roger Williams (another book in the Lives and Legacies series).

From Booklist

Despite its subject's great familiarity, Gau-stad's second Lives and Legacies series entry is even more engrossing than Roger Williams (2005). For when all Franklin's accomplishments are set out as succinctly and fluently as Gaustad sets them out, what Shakespeare's Cassius said of Caesar--"He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus"--appears eminently repeatable, sans sarcasm, about Franklin. He excelled at every occupation he earnestly essayed: businessman, journalist, civic innovator, inventor, experimenter, politician, and diplomat. Yet even during his long ambassadorial residence in a prerevolutionary France that lionized him, he refrained from looking important, dressing simply as "the epitome of a new and classless society." His statecraft has been slighted lately in comparison to his scientific work, so Gaustad's precis of his toils in England against the oppressive taxes of the 1760s and 1770s may be the most valuable chapter here. Franklin's late-life abolitionism, which Gaustad points up, will also gratify many. Only die-hard detractors of Franklin's Enlightenment rationalism may deny that Gaustad has written an excellent introduction to this foremost founding father. Ray Olson
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About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0195368703
• ISBN 13: 9780195368703
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160