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The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Renowned historian Gordon S. Wood spent ten years studying a legend. In this untraditional biography, he penetrates beneath 200 years' accumulation of images and representations to find the historical Franklin. He places his subject's amazing life in its 18th century context and shatters forever the comforting stereotypes: homespun patriot, cracker-barrel philosopher, folksy founder, genial self-improver.

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  • "Renowned historian Gordon S. Wood spent ten years studying a legend. In this untraditional biography, he penetrates beneath 200 years' accumulation of images and representations to find the historical Franklin. He places his subject's amazing life in its 18th century context and shatters forever the comforting stereotypes: homespun patriot, cracker-barrel philosopher, folksy founder, genial self-improver."@en
  • "Ten years in the making, the new book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood reveals Benjamin Franklin's life and meaning. Why did Benjamin Franklin retire from business and become gentleman? Why did he admire the British Empire--and join the American Revolution? Why did he being writing his Autobiography when he did? And how did the "first American" become an American in the first place? Renowned historian Gordon S. Wood spent ten years studying a legend. In this untraditional biography, he penetrates beneath 200 years' accumulation of images and representations to find the historical Franklin. He places his subject's amazing life in its 18th century context an shatters forever the comforting stereotypes: homespun patriot, cracker-barrel philosopher, folksy founder, genial self-improver."@en
  • "Offers a portrait of the complex, often contradictory figure of Benjamin Franklin, a man who was at once the quintessential American and a cosmopolitan lover of Europe, and a one-time loyalist turned revolutionary."@en
  • "Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: in recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as "the first American." The problem with this beloved notion of Franklin's quintessential Americanness, [the author] shows us in this book, is that it's simply not true. And it blinds us to the no less admirable or important but far more interesting man Franklin really was and leaves us powerless to make sense of the most crucial events of his life: his preoccupation with becoming a gentleman, his longtime loyalty to the Crown and burning ambition to be a player in the British Empire's power structure, the personal character of his conversion to revolutionary, his reasons for writing the Autobiography, his controversies with John and Samuel Adams and with Congress, his love of Europe and conflicted sense of national identity, the fact that his death was greeted by mass mourning in France and widely ignored in America. [In the book, he] argues that Franklin did become the Revolution's necessary man, second behind George Washington. Why was his importance so denigrated in his own lifetime and his image so distorted ever since? [The book provides] a fresh vision of Franklin's life and reputation, filled with insights into the Revolution and into the emergence of America's idea of itself. -Dust jacket."
  • "Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American."

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  • "Biography"
  • "Biography"@en
  • "Audiobooks"@en
  • "Downloadable audio books"@en

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  • "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin"
  • "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin"@en

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