The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The Original American Dream It’s a little presumptuous to write a “review” of a book as historically important as this, so I’ll just give a few reasons why you should read it.It’s well-written and engaging, even 200+ (nearing 300+; Franklin was born in 1706) years later. It stops in 1760, well before his involvement with the Revolution, but it covers in detail his youth, apprenticeships, the formation of his philosophy and ideals, and his path from poor roots to business and social success — the first telling of the American Dream, the idea that a poor young man could Find His Fortune in the New World through enterprise, wisdom, and work.There is a high degree of self-hagiography here, and it would be amusing to tally up (for example) how many times Franklin praises himself vs. how many times he advises on the virtue of humility. He smooths over controversial topics like his illegitimate son, he doesn’t mention his membership in the Freemasons, etc. The construction is also a bit rambling (“Then I did this thing. Next, I did another thing. Then I did a third thing”), but Franklin simply did so many interesting things — even in this short slice of his life — that the book is interesting despite that. There’s a great deal of discussion on his scientific and inventive accomplishments, and he talks at length about his development of his own personal moral code and how he achieved business success (along with Franklin’s Personal Method You Can Use for Self-Improvement — in some ways, this is the first self-help book!)All in all, this is very much worth reading, and gives a compelling picture of Franklin’s life and times. I particularly liked the picture Franklin draws of contemporary American society — free, open, and small, with most people in most towns all knowing each other, and business opportunities are wide open for anyone with industry and pluck. I’m not sure how similar modern-day America still is to Franklin’s Philadelphia, but it’s certain that Franklin — and this book — helped set the image that we still *want* to believe America conforms to. And for that alone, it’s worth reading.If you like this book, you might also be interested in reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s _Democracy in America_, for another view of colonial-era America, or any of Mark Twain’s nonfiction (_Life on the Mississippi_, _Roughing It_, etc.), for similar accounts of America’s growth and development a hundred-odd years further on. Any of those should be available as a free Kindle download.
Enlightening and Written in the Style of the Times This “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” does not contain the type of finished material one has come to expect in a finished coherent autobiographical writing covering the whole life span of the individual written by single author over a continuous period of time. This is really source material partially written over distinctly separate periods of time wherein the author, Benjamin Franklin, wrote on two different continents without access to the other parts of his text. With that said, I still think that this book is a wonderful and enlightening piece of work. It should, in my opinion, be considered for placement in every high school and college library, and it should perhaps be wise to consider it for required reading in those institutions. The book tells of the life and times in which Mr. Franklin lived, the attitudes of the colonists and of the British and the ways that things were accomplished in colonial America. It is truly amazing to me to hear first hand how a single individual with only two years of formal education can educate himself as this man did and to rise to make such truly great contributions to society, science, engineering, and politics. I highly recommend this book.
An Unfinished Autobiography of the Consumate American Life Franklin wrote this autobiography as a letter of instruction in the ways of the world to his youthful and illegitimate son of 40. It only covers the first half or so of his incredible life, so the things that really made him well-known are not covered, but there is plenty here anyway.