Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Man, John Adams hated EVERYbody, didn't he? What a cranky bastard. ( )

We should all live lives that become ever more eventful as the years pass. In Isaacson's telling, Franklin's life proceeds as if each of his years had twice as much opportunity for productivity and adventure as did the previous. Through self-invention and chance timing, Franklin lived several amazing lives: author, printer, businessman, community organizer, inventor/scientist, diplomat. Any one of them would make for a good read, and combined they are a true marvel. Isaacson follows the young runaway Bostonian to Philadelphia, then to England, then back to the States, and then to France, where he waged a diplomatic revolution while the American one was underway. The government of the United States is often described as a grand experiment, and it's hard not to think of it as one of Franklin's personal experiments -- he was famed for setting up organizations, from militia to shared libraries to schools to fire departments, and the U.S. may simply be the biggest club for mutual support that he helped design.

The length of this book owes much to the detailed reproduction of its subject's own writings, both published and private correspondence, and as such doubles as a good abridged reader. There is also a solid final chapter in the book that puts Franklin's legacy in historical perspective, watching as passing generations heaped praise and scorn and praise again on his memory. It is disappointing that his employment as a slang term for a certain denomination of currency is not mentioned.

I read this book after reading the book Isaacson wrote subsequent to it, his Einstein biography. Clearly Isaacson improved significantly as a writer between the two books. He has a kind of set routine, in which a broad array of experiences are depicted at length and in enjoyable rambles quoting in detail from primary sources, all of which is then summarized in a pithy list -- a mix of descriptive triangulation and essay-question talking points. The mode can be a little tiresome in its mechanical rhetorical precision, and its anecdote-closing predictability, but much more so here than in Einstein, when he is looser and even more witty.

On a personal note, I found the book highly inspiring. In all seriousness, while reading it, I was encouraged to act on several of Franklin's own motivations. I formed my own little musical society on the Soundcloud.com platform. Each week, members of this society participate in small compositional projects. The group is called a Junto, and it is named for a group Franklin formed in the 1720s. One of the first projects was a tribute to Franklin in the form of an homage to his work with the glass harmonica. More on the Junto here:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

I haven't read Isaacson's Kissinger book, and have no immediate plans to, but it is interesting that his first three major biographies (before his Steve Jobs one) focused on three of the more unlikely ladies men in modern Western history.

This was a pleasure and just the kind of biography I find trustworthy. The kind that acknowledges other views and controversies and with extensive notes and sources in the back. More than that, it's the rare biography that can inspire smiles and even giggles--I'd mark this up to five stars if I could credit Isaacson for that--but the source of the humor is the frequent quotes from Benjamin Franklin himself. Isaacson said in his introduction that "Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us" and that proved to be so--his pragmatism and humor is the keynote to his character. Before reading this, if someone asked me which Founding Father I'd chose to have dinner and conversation with I think I would have chosen Jefferson. After this it's hard not to name Franklin as a favorite and the one with the most winning personality--at least if you weren't married to him. Or one of his children.

Franklin has his faults, goodness knows, and Isaacson doesn't gloss over them, but they just make him all the more poignantly human. I've heard it said that the Revolutionary War was really a civil war given how the lines between Patriots versus Loyalists cut through families. Of all the Founding Fathers, the cut was sharpest with Benjamin Franklin--his own son was the King's Governor of New Jersey and chose the opposing side. I did know that before reading this biography but there was plenty I didn't know--for instance that this man so identified with Philadelphia was born and grew up in Boston and spent so many years in England as well as Paris. Isaacson, who wrote biographies of Einstein and Steve Jobs, does justice to not just Franklin the statesman but the inventor and scientist as well. And throughout and especially in his epilogue gives us not just an assessment of the man but the biography of how he was received by others such as Sinclair Lewis, D.H. Lawrence and John Updike. An engaging and lively biography. ( )

I think we all grow up hearing, reading and being told about the founding fathers but rarely do any of us really read about them as individuals. Every time I do I’m amazed at what I read and how far ahead of their time they really were. Benjamin Franklin epitomizes this; printer, scientist, inventor, diplomat, politician and above it all human. This book gets into some of that nitty-gritty; the women, the ruthless businessman, more women, questionable husband and father.

The author does an amazing job walking us through Franklin’s life and showing us the brilliance of the man and the fallibility at the same time.

Wonderful read and would recommend it to everyone – just be prepared to devote some time to it. ( )

Peter Gay, writing in The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom, assayed the views of the French Philosphes toward Benjamin Franklin. He quoted Condorcet, who said in his eulogy to Franklin in 1790, “Men whom the reading of philosophic books had secretly converted to the love of liberty became enthusiastic over the liberty of a foreign people while they waited for the moment when they could recover their own, and they seized with joy the opportunity to avow publicly the sentiments which prudence had prevented them from expressing.” Franklin, who had spent years in France representing first the thirteen colonies and later the United States of America, had earlier been embraced by Voltaire who, according to Gay, was joined by spectators who saw him “embrace Franklin and bless Franklin's godson with these charged words: “God and liberty.” By now God had become the guide to American philosphes, and liberty an American specialty.
The Benjamin Franklin described in Walter Isaacson's magisterial survey of his life was truly an American philosphe and a friend of liberty. The image of Franklin that I took away from this biography was all of that, but even more one of a practical man whose never-ending search for knowledge and wisdom was always used to further the ends of practical applications both in his own life and for his country.
The early years of his life are probably the most familiar to most Americans, for he is one of the “Founding Fathers” whose life has been elevated to mythical status. Issacson adds to the familiar story the details of family and the episodes that are less familiar but all-important to Franklin's development. The prodigal son would be one metaphor for his life. One event that I found notable was his retirement from business (he had a very successful printing business in Philadelphia) at the age of 42, exactly halfway through his long life. It was his achievements in the second half of his life, scientific, social, political, diplomatic, and philosophic that made him the man who would be embraced by Voltaire and others within and without his home country. He would charm philosophers in England as well, persuading David Hume to support the colonial cause.
“Of one of Hume's essays favoring free trade with the colonies, Franklin enthused that it would have “a good effect in promoting a certain interest too little thought of by selfish man . . . I mean the interest of humanity, or the common good of mankind.”(p 197)
Isaacson uses the theme of “pouring oil on troubled water” to tie together separate sections of the book. This is originally based on Franklin's observation of the physical effect of oil on the wake of the ship (evidence of his consistently putting to use his powers of observation in the cause of science), but it would take on metaphoric status and could also refer to his diplomatic achievements and, to a lesser degree, his family relations. Overall the author's journalistic style is fluent enough to keep you going through the less exciting passages until you reach the years of conflict: Coercive measures, war for independence, and diplomatic intrigue in France.
While Franklin labored long in London to maintain the uneasy relationship between the Crown and the colonies he reached a turning point with the intolerable taxes and other coercive acts. These led him to “abandon his moderation in the colonies' battles with Parliament. The turning point had been reached.”(p 247)
The concluding section tells of Franklin's final and perhaps finest performance as grand old man at the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787. Here he used his status as diplomat emeritus to silently (mostly) help usher into existence the document that would be the foundation for the new Republic to this day. The combination of his thoughts and actions, the events in which he participated, and the effect he had on family and country lead his life to rightly be called “An American Life”. ( )