Authors: Walter Isaacson, Boyd Gaines
ISBN-13: 9780743533652, ISBN-10: 0743533658
Format: Compact Disc
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Date Published: July 2003
Edition: Abridged, 6 CDs, Approx. 7 Hours
Journalist and historian Walter Isaacson is best known in literary circles as the writer of magisterial biographies, scholarly and meticulously researched, yet immensely entertaining.
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us -- an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings.
In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours.
The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.
In this...
It is a thoroughly researched, crisply written, convincingly argued chronicle that is also studded with little nuggets of fresh information... Instead of Franklin's Boswell, Isaacson comes across as his Edward R. Murrow, diligently and often deftly interrogating the man while sifting through the veritable mountain of scholarship that has accumulated around him over the past two centuries. --Joseph J. Ellis
Ch. 1 | Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of America | 1 |
Ch. 2 | Pilgrim's Progress: Boston, 1706-1723 | 5 |
Ch. 3 | Journeyman: Philadelphia and London, 1723-1726 | 36 |
Ch. 4 | Printer: Philadelphia, 1726-1732 | 52 |
Ch. 5 | Public Citizen: Philadelphia, 1731-1748 | 102 |
Ch. 6 | Scientist and Inventor: Philadelphia, 1744-1751 | 129 |
Ch. 7 | Politician: Philadelphia, 1749-1756 | 146 |
Ch. 8 | Troubled Waters: London, 1757-1762 | 175 |
Ch. 9 | Home Leave: Philadelphia, 1763-1764 | 206 |
Ch. 10 | Agent Provocateur: London, 1765-1770 | 219 |
Ch. 11 | Rebel: London, 1771-1775 | 252 |
Ch. 12 | Independence: Philadelphia, 1775-1776 | 290 |
Ch. 13 | Courtier: Paris, 1776-1778 | 325 |
Ch. 14 | Bon Vivant: Paris, 1778-1785 | 350 |
Ch. 15 | Peacemaker: Paris, 1778-1785 | 382 |
Ch. 16 | Sage: Philadelphia, 1785-1790 | 436 |
Ch. 17 | Epilogue | 471 |
Ch. 18 | Conclusions | 476 |
Cast of Characters | 495 | |
Chronology | 503 | |
Currency Conversions | 507 | |
Acknowledgments | 509 | |
Sources and Abbreviations | 513 | |
Notes | 519 | |
Index | 567 |