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Benjamin franklin autobiography summary

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Reading the Best Biographies of All Time


The First American: The Life and Times
of Benjamin Franklin
by H. W. Brands
716 pages
Anchor Books (Random House)
Published: September 2000

H. W. Brands’ “The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” was published in 2000 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Brands is a professor of history and government at the University of Texas and a prolific author. He has written nearly three-dozen books including biographies of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and Ronald Reagan (each of which I have read and reviewed).

Given its encyclopedic breadth and scholarly bent, “The First American” has largely supplanted Carl Van Doren’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic as the standard biography of Franklin.  With 716 pages of text and studious attention to every major facet of Franklin’s unusually varied and interesting life, Brands’ biography is comprehensive, detailed and incredibly thoughtful.

It is quickly obvious that this distinguished Founding Father is a s

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Review of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson

Over 300 years since his birth, Benjamin Franklin still looms as one of our most familiar and beloved founding fathers. Despite his place in our pantheon of national heroes, Franklin uniquely seems to be remembered as an approachable man—the one who more than any other could strike up conversation with someone today and even find himself at home with modern society. Perhaps this is because Franklin was perpetually curious and disarmingly candid, never hiding from himself or his posterity his passions or his indiscretions. He was well-liked, outgoing, famously flirtatious even in his old age, yet among the most intellectual men of his age and seemingly able to succeed in whatever endeavor into which he entered.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life is one of the more consequential of the dozens of biographies of the man to appear in the last few decades. I picked it up due to author Walter Isaacson’s track record of producing acclaimed biographies of noteworthy individuals (Einstein: His Life and Univers

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Benjamin Franklin is such a fascinating man. I am humbled by what he was able to accomplish in his lifetime. He involved himself in all aspects of life. While I thought I knew a lot about his accomplishments, his autobiography opened my eyes to a lot more. I picked up The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin to meet part of Modern Mrs. Darcy reading challenge. I had to read a book from the backlist of a new favorite author. In his book, How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie repeatedly referenced Ben Franklin.

I have mixed reviews about the book I purchased. The content was great; but, I was not satisfied with the book itself. My copy of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is an unabridged version printed on 8.5” x 11” paper. The typeface was microscopic. Even with bifocals, a Franklin invention, I found the book difficult to read. This version had 45 pages. When I got halfway through the book, I elected to go to the library and pick up a copy printed in a different format. The library copy was a 1964 version edited by Leonard Labaree

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