Benjamin Franklin (2004) is a delightful, absorbing read about a man with a wealth of knowledge and a variety of interests: rather like an eighteenth century Leonardo da Vinci. Benjamin Franklin was America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, business strategist and political thinker. With a lifelong intellectual curiosity, he proved that lightening was electricity by flying a kite in a storm. He invented bifocal glasses and clean-burning stoves. He espoused theories on the common cold and the gulf stream. He helped with America’s treaty of alliance with France and the peace treaty with England.
Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father of America, the man who helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, was the son of an Englishman. Franklin, born in 1706 in Boston, began his career as a printer’s apprentice at seventeen and in his early twenties opened his own printery and distribution company. From this base, and with a gregarious outlook, he launched a number of community organizations, such as the fire brigade, a lending library and other “do-good” associations. At the age of 42, he sold his successful business to “read, study, make experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy men as are pleased to honor me with their friendship”, though in reality he focused his ambition on science, politics, diplomacy and inventions.
He made many long trips to England and on his return launched a plan for America to become independent of Britain. And hence he served and steered his country towards the revolution. In his 70s he visited France to enlist their aid in his fight for independence. Through his diplomat ways, his flirtations with the ladies of Paris, and France’s 440-year tradition of regular wars with England, the time was ripe for success. The French loved him: “he knew how to be impolite without being rude”; and he loved the French: “I found them a most amiable nation to live with. The Spaniards are by common opinion supposed to be cruel, the English proud, the Scotch insolent, the Dutch avaricious, etc., but I think the French have no national vice ascribed to them. They have some frivolities, but they are harmless”; and added “this is the civilest nation upon earth”.
Franklin observed that America’s strength in world affairs “would come from a unique mix that included idealism as well as realism … and its virtuous nature”, and he worked towards his goal. One of Franklin’s French friends said, “he would eat, sleep, work whenever he saw fit, according to his needs, so that there never was a more leisurely man, though he certainly handled a tremendous amount of business.” Even as he indulged in the frivolities of pre-revolutionary Paris, he focused much of his writing on egalitarian, anti-elitist ideas and middle-class virtues.
Isaacson not only presents Franklin’s virtues, but also his indiscretions and complexities: his illegitimate son; his “lack of soulful commitment and passion” towards relationships; his conniving ways; and his oft-times self-promotion and publicity. However, Isaacson boasts that Franklin’s greatest strength was his willingness to compromise: “compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make democracies … his focus tended to be on how ordinary issues affect everyday lives, and on how ordinary people could build a better society”. He was also “the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become”.
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