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Summary
Summary
Chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and as a best book for 2002 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and Publishers Weekly. A finalist for the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. The greatest statesman of his age, Benjamin Franklin was also a pioneering scientist, a successful author, the first American postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant. In addition, he was a man of vast contradictions. This bestselling biography by one of our greatest historians offers a compact and provocative new portrait of America's most extraordinary patriot.
Author Notes
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Edmund Morgan spent most of his youth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was educated at the Belmont Hill School, Harvard, and the London School of Economics. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1942 and three years later began his teaching career at the University of Chicago.From there he moved first to Brown University and then to Yale, where he became Sterling Professor in 1965 and emeritus in 1986.
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism. At the same time, they captivate readers in the classroom and beyond. His work is a felicitous blend of rigorous scholarship, imaginative analysis, and graceful presentation.
Although sometimes characterized as the quintessential Whig historian, in reality Morgan transcends simplistic categorization and has done more, perhaps, than any other historian to open new and creative paths of inquiry into the meaning of the early American experience.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This wonderful biography of an extraordinary man results from a perfect marriage of subject and scholar. Among the most senior of our senior historians, Yale professor emeritus Morgan (American Slavery, American Freedom, etc.) proves himself still at the height of his powers. While Franklin remains, as Morgan writes, elusive and hard to know because "it is so hard to distinguish his natural impulses from his principles," the author probably comes as close to understanding him as anyone can. Rather than focusing on Franklin's role as classic, representative American, Morgan instead gives us a portrait of his public life, almost a third of it spent abroad, in England and France, more than any comparable figure of his generation. In Morgan's hands, Franklin therefore turns out to be more cosmopolitan than provincial, more worldly than Pennsylvanian. He also shines in this biography as someone deeply committed to his fellow Americans and the nation they were creating. Many previous biographers have sought to explain how Franklin helped lay the foundations for a distinctive American mind and personality. Morgan instead takes us more into Franklin's thinking and activities as diplomat and politician and into the way his winning personality served his country so well at the moment it needed him. While suitably critical when Franklin deserves criticism, Morgan's bravura performance is nevertheless a buoyant appreciation of a man whose fame as aphorist in Poor Richard's Almanack and as the scientist who helped discover electricity have often obscured his devotion to the public good. It's hard to imagine a better life study of a man we've all heard about but who is barely known. 20 illus. (Sept. 24) Forecast: Morgan's reputation (he's a Bancroft and Francis Parkman prize winner) guarantees reviews, and perhaps with John Adams and Founding Brothers, readers will be ready for another great founder. This is a History Book Club main selection. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In getting to know Franklin, the author relied on two sources: his own erudition cultivated over a distinguished career as a historian (Morgan has won the most prestigious prizes for works of American history), and The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, a monumental project of scholarship still in progress. Morgan adopts a chronological approach from which he often departs for expansive discussions of Franklin's occupational arenas--printing, morals, science, politics, and diplomacy--through which Franklin expressed his attitude toward life. That one's attitude eventually evolves to a settled view is probably true of every person, but perhaps it is expressed in no one more interestingly than in Franklin. A youthful flirtation with a philosophy of amoralism, Morgan relates, matured to Franklin's fundamental precept that one's life must be useful and that one should not give in to passions that would impede one's value to friends, to knowledge, and to country. An astute appraisal of a Founder, Morgan's work is less than a biography but more than a character profile, and will be of interest to history buffs. --Gilbert Taylor
Choice Review
Watch out! The Franklin Tercentenary is coming, and we can expect a steady flow of works about Benjamin Franklin that will surely increase in number as 2006 approaches. However, anyone working on an interpretative biography of Franklin might want to stop and rethink it, because, in the words of Gordon Wood, Morgan's book is "the best short biography of Franklin ever written." (New York Review of Books, September 26, 2002). Morgan's biography grew out of an introductory piece for the CD-ROM version of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, and it is Franklin's version of Franklin. Morgan (emer., Yale Univ.) makes very clear in his preface that his work is not a full biography, that it is "purposely short." "It is meant only to say enough about the man to show that he is worth the trouble," Morgan writes. "It is the result of reading everything on the disk and in the volumes [Papers of Benjamin Franklin] but not much else, and therefore, pretty one-sided, a letter of introduction to a man worth knowing, worth spending time with." But what an introduction! This is an essential work for anyone with an interest in Franklin, the American Revolution, or the art of biography.Srodes's book is more comprehensive than Morgan's treatment. A journalist, Srodes tells a good story, a balanced story, but nothing really sets this work apart from previous biographies. The standard full biographies still remain Carl Van Doren's Benjamin Franklin (1938) or the more recent by H.R. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (CH, Feb'01). Srodes's work will interest general readers and undergraduates, but probably will not greatly interest specialists. ^BSumming Up: Morgan--Essential. All public and academic libraries; Srodes--Recommended. General and undergraduate readers. G. W. Franz Pennsylvania State University, Delaware County Campus
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Through the simple admission that this biography is meant primarily to introduce Franklin to the general reading public, Morgan avoids the biographer's dilemma of choosing between a narrative focus or presenting a comprehensive history of a subject. He begins with an overview that seeks to educe Franklin's character through an examination of the principles and ideas of this early American Renaissance man as expressed across the board in the various parts of his life. Yet, it is not Franklin the Renaissance man, but rather Franklin the Founding Father of whom Morgan is writing, arguing persuasively that this was the role to which the statesman was most devoted. In telling this story, the author creates a vivid narrative, an adventure story of sorts, which grabs readers with the tale of his subject's part in the political developments of 18th-century America. Yet, the author never loses sight of the importance of the other aspects of the man's personality and the thoughts and actions of others toward him. This is the key to this biography's success: it engages readers' interest in the great drama of this fascinating man's life. Teens may well begin here, and have material enough, but this fascinating introduction could entice them to look further.-Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In this relatively brief biography, Morgan (History/Yale) aims to depict Franklin's personality as much as the deeds that made him famous. Of course, the two are related: the author argues that, unlike his colleagues among the Founding Fathers who rose to their positions via oratory or elected office or family connections, Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) accomplished his goals by working behind the scenes. He owed his success to his affability, his work as a printer and writer, and his fame as an inventor. His success in England and France as ambassador from the colonies and then the fledgling US derived more from his experiments with electricity than from his diplomatic portfolio. Having founded most of the cultural institutions in Philadelphia at the time, usually by coordinating groups of friends to support his proposals rather than working personally on any one project, he easily fluttered in and out of the English and French courts, discussing everything from the new devices called hot-air balloons to the loans Congress had asked him to acquire for his new country. Franklin's skills at adapting to his environment could also be a shortcoming, writes Morgan. At the outset of the Revolution, he was an unrepentant imperialist who believed America would someday be the center of the British Empire. He'd spent years hobnobbing with British officials, and his initial proposals to keep the colonies in the fold were completely out of touch with the facts on the ground in places like Boston, where noted citizens were dumping tea into the harbor. By the time Franklin became a member of the Constitutional Convention, he tended to sit silently, his gravitas contributing more than his sharp tongue. Morgan's account is based almost exclusively on its subject's massive collection of writings (now being edited for publication in 46 volumes), but Franklin was diversified enough to satisfy most readers. An excellent portrayal of a patriot's style and substance.
Library Journal Review
Morgan (Sterling Professor of History, emeritus, Yale), the award-winning author of numerous books, including Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, here offers the best short biography of Franklin ever written. He is ideally suited to the task. For many years, he has chaired the administrative board that oversees the ongoing work on The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale Univ., 36 volumes to date), making this the first biography whose author can claim to have read virtually everything ever written by or to Franklin. Without denying Franklin's flaws, Morgan expresses affection and admiration for his subject throughout. He argues forcefully that Franklin's chief goal was to live a "useful" life, showing that Franklin held public service above his lucrative career as a printer and the fame he achieved as a scientist. Morgan deftly shows how Franklin's desire to serve the public good occasionally led him to support ideas at variance with his personal views. The chief virtue of this book is also its chief flaw. Morgan's almost exclusive reliance on Franklin's papers gives the reader an unparalleled glimpse into Franklin's mind. Yet by keeping the story so closely tied to Franklin, the author sometimes gives too little attention to other persons and to the general social and political context. Moreover, he never discusses how his views compare with those of others, such as David McCullough (John Adams) and H.W. Brands (The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin). Nevertheless, the general reader will find this book to be a well-written, thoughtful appreciation of one of the Founding Fathers who did the most to shape his era and our own. Highly recommended for all public libraries.-T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.