Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin FranklinThis engaging book reveals Benjamin Franklin’s human side—his tastes and habits, his enthusiasms, and his devotion to democracy and the people of the United States. Three hundred years after his birth, we may remember Franklin’s famous Autobiography, or his status as framer of the Declaration of Independence and the peace with Great Britain, or his experiments in electricity, or perhaps his sage advice on diligence and thrift. But historian Edmund S. Morgan invites us to meet the man himself, a sociable, good-natured, and extraordinary human being with boundless curiosity about the natural world and a vision of what America could be. Drawing on lifelong research in the vast Franklin archives, Morgan assembles both famous and lesser-known writings that offer insights into this founding father’s thinking. The book is organized around four major themes, each with an introduction. The first section includes journal excerpts and letters revealing Franklin’s personal tastes and habits. The second is devoted to Franklin’s inexhaustible intellectual energy and his scientific discoveries. The third and fourth chronicle his devotion to serving the people who became the United States both before and after the Revolution and to advancing his democratic vision of their future. Franklin’s humanity and genius have never seemed more real than in the pages of this appealing anthology. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 73
Page xi
... first to meet him as an ordinary , gregarious , good - natured human being , wel- comed everywhere for a chat , a ... first two volumes and half of the third were needed for everything he wrote in the first half of his long [ xi ] Preface.
... first to meet him as an ordinary , gregarious , good - natured human being , wel- comed everywhere for a chat , a ... first two volumes and half of the third were needed for everything he wrote in the first half of his long [ xi ] Preface.
Page xii
... first half of his long life ( eighty - four years ) . It was what he did in the second half that mattered , after he had left his business career behind . He was in his forties when he performed the electrical experiments and ...
... first half of his long life ( eighty - four years ) . It was what he did in the second half that mattered , after he had left his business career behind . He was in his forties when he performed the electrical experiments and ...
Page xiii
... first as a human being, then as a deservedly re- nowned scientific thinker, and finally as a visionary striver for a better world. To this end I have divided the selections into four parts. Part I is aimed at getting to know the man as ...
... first as a human being, then as a deservedly re- nowned scientific thinker, and finally as a visionary striver for a better world. To this end I have divided the selections into four parts. Part I is aimed at getting to know the man as ...
Page 1
... First , a word about what is conspicuously missing here : his role as a husband and father . One reason for the omission is that his surviving papers tell us little about the marriage beyond the small details of domestic life . In 1730 ...
... First , a word about what is conspicuously missing here : his role as a husband and father . One reason for the omission is that his surviving papers tell us little about the marriage beyond the small details of domestic life . In 1730 ...
Page 25
... first paragraph what he deliberately tried to avoid in himself and in the company he kept. He had a lifelong aversion to babblers, people who talked too much with too little to say, and he always strove to avoid babbling himself. In his ...
... first paragraph what he deliberately tried to avoid in himself and in the company he kept. He had a lifelong aversion to babblers, people who talked too much with too little to say, and he always strove to avoid babbling himself. In his ...
Contents
1 | |
Part II Nature observed | 67 |
Part III A continental vision | 141 |
Part IV War peace and humanity | 219 |
Chronology | 289 |
Credits | 291 |
Index | 297 |
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