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
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Page xiii
... Sometime in his forties he decided on a life of public service. At the same time, I believe, he decided that the public he should serve was more than his neighborhood or city or province but something larger: an Amer- ica that was not ...
... Sometime in his forties he decided on a life of public service. At the same time, I believe, he decided that the public he should serve was more than his neighborhood or city or province but something larger: an Amer- ica that was not ...
Page 12
... sometimes observed that we are apt to fancy the person that cannot speak intelligibly to us, proportionably stupid in understanding, and when we speak two or three words of English to a foreigner, it is louder than ordinary, as if we ...
... sometimes observed that we are apt to fancy the person that cannot speak intelligibly to us, proportionably stupid in understanding, and when we speak two or three words of English to a foreigner, it is louder than ordinary, as if we ...
Page 14
... sometimes entertain one another for half an hour agreeably , yet perhaps we are seldom in the humour for it together . I rise in the morning and read for an hour or two perhaps , and then reading grows tiresome . Want of exercise ...
... sometimes entertain one another for half an hour agreeably , yet perhaps we are seldom in the humour for it together . I rise in the morning and read for an hour or two perhaps , and then reading grows tiresome . Want of exercise ...
Page 23
... sometimes read and often wanted to regard the Prospects . Finding this Change trou- blesome and not always sufficiently ready , I had the Glasses cut , and half of each kind associated in the same Circle , thus for landing By this means ...
... sometimes read and often wanted to regard the Prospects . Finding this Change trou- blesome and not always sufficiently ready , I had the Glasses cut , and half of each kind associated in the same Circle , thus for landing By this means ...
Page 31
... I ought not to know ; and therefore I will not conjure , as you sometimes say I do . If I could conjure , it should be to know what was that oddest Question about me that ever was thought of , FRIENDSHIP AND FLIRTATION [ 31 ]
... I ought not to know ; and therefore I will not conjure , as you sometimes say I do . If I could conjure , it should be to know what was that oddest Question about me that ever was thought of , FRIENDSHIP AND FLIRTATION [ 31 ]
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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