Review The First American: The Life And Times Of Benjamin Franklin Constructed By H.W. Brands Accessible As EPub

is a well written and highly enjoyable biography, It not only details Franklin's life, but also fleshes out the era to put his doings in the proper context, My only minor criticism is that, at times, it is a bit too detailed for the casual reader, Benjamin Franklins story is the story of an exceptionally gifted and interesting man, For H. W. Brands, a professor of history at Texas AampM University, he is the central figure of an era marked by sweeping change because he was involved in so many other aspects of his rapidly changing world beyond political revolution.
By the time revolution shook America, Franklin had already earned worldwide fame, Had there never been an American Revolution, it is likely that few of the Founding Fathers would be remembered today yet Franklin was an extraordinary man even in ordinary times.
His reputation was assured by his inventions, discoveries, and literary activities, As Brands writes, ''Franklin was by far the most famous American in the world, ''

Although Franklin's father only had enough money to send him to school for two years, young Ben diligently continued his own education through voracious reading, Thus, Franklin became a true Renaissance man with many areas of knowledge, He made several contributions to science electricity, meteorology, inventions bifocal lenses, the Franklin stove, a remote grabber, and public institutions the American Philosophical Society, the University of Pennsylvania, the U.
S. Post Office, the first subscription library in America, Philadelphia's first fire company, But Brands places his greatest emphasis on Benjamin Franklin's development as a politician and statesman wartime minister to France, senior peace negotiator with Britain, participant at the Constitutional Convention.
It was Franklin who persuaded France to become an American ally, which ultimately led to his country's victory in its war for independence,

While there is much of interest to learn from Brands biography Franklin, the book at times seemed to move along too slowly, Some days the narrative seemed flat I would often lose interest and only readpages in a day, Too often, we get an uninspired, unfocused record of Franklin's interests and accomplishments, The author never explores deeply into Franklins character, He does not seriously examine Franklin's lax attitude toward his family, Why did he spend nearlyyears apart from his wife, Deborah, while serving on foreign posts Why was he reluctant to reconcile with his son William after his loyalist politics left them estranged Too much space is devoted to Franklins roguish and not terribly significant adventures.
Had it not been for this lack of focus, this biography would easily have earned five,

RTC . . maybe Long and drawn out, You would think one of the more interesting people in the founding of this nation would have a more interesting biography, "Finally," this is what all my goodread friends are saying, I started this book seven months ago, What took me so long, First, I don't actually read that much, Secondly, I often found myself pausing while reading to look up some piece of information, I was led down many a wikipedia trail reading this book, Finally, the printer printed on big pages in a small font,

Ok all my excuses are finished, what about the book, I personally prefer learning about history through the lens of biography, Given that caveat, I consider The First American to be one of the best historical books I've ever read, We get an intimate portrait of the greatest thinker of his time if not one of the greatest thinkers in all of history, The author exposes us to a very human Franklin, We see witness his sadness at the breaking of relations with his son, who chose loyalty to the crown over loyalty to his father,

Beyond Franklin himself we encounter a treasure of information about the milieu that produced the revolution and eventually, the United States, I learned more about what lead to the revolution reading this book than I did in all the schooling I had, I highly recommend it to anybody with an interest in the period

"Go on doing great things and loving pretty women"
I so enjoyed reading about this great man.
He was a genius! He was one of the founding fathers and because of his insight, kindness, and knowledge he helped make America great! I'm not sure how this received "my rating" before now, but theare accurate.
I really liked this book, I learned so much more about Benjamin Franklin, One confession, the reason I put this down dealt with me reading something that made me angry with one of my favorite founding fathers, I am glad I decided to let go of that anger and proceed to the end of this biography,

HW Brands' source notes are extensivepages worth! His telling of Benjamin Franklin's life incorporates quotes from published works, correspondence, and various other sources, including these sources helps the narrative to take on a personal feeling, The personal touch is what held my attention for so long,

The work flows well keeping the reader's attention and eye,

I learned a lot! Reemphasized the reason Franklin's birthday is a point of discussion, How the continental congress and constitutional conventions worked, Diplomatic trips overseas and the trouble they wreaked on his person physically, Personal struggles with family, friends, etc, The great societies and institutions he founded or established, Inventions. So much more.

My edition of the book has a "silky" cover and flips well, And for as battered as the edges got over time, the binding is still unbroken, Overall i really enjoyed reading this biography and learning more about Benjamin Franklin, his life, and his contributions to building

the USA, Thispart lecture series is a very good overview of Benjamin Franklin's life, It is a short course at onlyhours long, but provides a good introduction into the Colonial Era and how this larger than life figure grew into his famous role as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
This biography of Franklin is billed as comprehensive and it certainly is that, It would seem to contain essentially every thing that is known about the great man's life, I would say it is a must read for anyone interested in American history, Even though it is a huge book,
By the title, Brands makes the case that it is Franklin who most deserves the credit for the steps that led to the creation of the American republic.
Washington, of course, deserves the credit for winning the war, but who got it started is the question,
Before reading this work I had believed that it was John Adams who deserved most of the credit, probably because I had read more about Adams than Franklin.
I also knew that Franklin was a libertine which I don't like,
However, Brands has convinced me that it is indeed Franklin who most merits the credit for the birth of my country, In fact it is likely that because he was a libertine he got along with the French so well and secured their critical assistance when John Adams could not.

Reading the detail of Franklin's dealings with the British government as agent for the colonies in London, leading up to the split, makes me thank our "lucky American" for the incredible arrogance, stupidity and greed of parliament and George III.
If they had any foresight London would today be the capitol of the greatest nation on earth, albeit with most of the population on the other side of the Atlantic.
Franklin was arguing for unification and the British governement said, "no you are our possession, " I haven't read any of the author's other works, so I can't comment on how his style and craft may be evolving, but this book is wellwritten, wellthoughtout, and as far as I can discern, wellresearched.


Like most people, I've known of Franklin all my life well, less aboutyears, And, like most people, I also knew he flew a kite in an electrical storm which seems rather foolhardy to downrightdangerous, if you understand what the quantity of power in a typical lightning strike is, invented the lightning rod, was a printer by trade, wrote and published "Poor Richard's Almanac", invented the "Franklin stove", had something to do with the U.
S. Postal System, and was a diplomat in France at some point,

Unlike most people, I also knew that he was honored by having his name engraved into the assembly hall of the Boston Latin School and in theth grade was required to read "The Autobiography of Ben Franklin" along with another colonial thriller, "Johnny Tremain".


What I learned from this book was a great deal, To go over all of the specifics would probably take a sizable fraction of the book itself, So, I'll restrict my comments to a few choice morsels,

Franklin spent years in both England and France, I mean years. Ok, I knew about when he was young and drank water while all his coworkers drank lots of beer in a print shop in England, He was there for extended visits in both countries, England first before actual armed rebellion and then France, Heck, he even planned on living in England permanently because he was so well accepted and so pleased with the culture, intellectual environment and bigcity life,

Franklin's experiment with the kite was welldesigned to minimize risks to the experimenter, but others repeated it and at at least one got a serious shock chalk one up to the stunningly obvious.
But, the kite experiment was one of a series that helped define that various phenomena were all interrelated and described the same basic, underlying principle or forces,

All of Franklin's real innovation and contribution to the organization and operation of the Postal Service came during decades of parttime effort as a Royal appointee, His work with the postrevolutionary USPS was basically to restore the fine operation that he had already created,

Franklin did not patent and essentially gave away the plans for the Franklin "fireplace" i, e. stove to help people heat the homes with less fuel and with less money,

I could go on and on, but if anything I've written here intrigues you, go out and read the book!

And, yes, I liked it.
Now that I've read the best, it's time to study the rest, Seriously though, folks, this book should have WON the Pulitzer back in, The only book I've read and reviewed this past year that even comes close to this one is Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David Blight, This Franklin biography surpasses every other Franklin book I've read, which are considerable, If you're looking to dive into a great biography about one of our most famous Founders, pick up this book, Earlier: I think this is the Vook edition, It has embedded video. I downloaded it as an app to my iPhone from the Apple iBookstore, I have a hunch this multimedia book experience is not as rich as it could be, but it's a start on a form that's in its infancy,

Update: Turns out I'm not a big fan of the Vook format, at least for recreational reading, I suppose I'm too retro, equate reading with "quiet time, "

I like taking books, and ebooks, to public places, Unless I want to wear earbuds, I'm not comfortable playing the clips in the Vook when there are other people around,

I still think that the ideal app for a videobook app is the textbook, The multimedia elements really enhance the experience, I'm sure,

As to the content, Franklin was a character, I'll add him to the list of "people I'd like to have dinner with, "

The mans own storyThe Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinis one of the most widely read books in American history, The image that comes through in that unfinished account, which Franklin called his Memoirs, is that of a pious, straitlaced striver, ever ready with an admonition to hard work and healthy habits.
Although praised as one of the most outstanding autobiographies ever written, it suffers from the weakness endemic to the genre in its omission of much that would have given a more wellrounded picture of the man.


H. W. Brands new Benjamin Franklin biography, The First American, corrects the record with copious references to what Franklins family, friends, and enemies alike said or wrote about him at the time.
The book is brilliant. For anyone with an interest in colonial America and the Revolution, its must reading, And, like the best novels, its hard to put down,

A man almost everyone liked

What do we Americans know about this remarkable man if our only source of information is what we learned in school Not much.
We suffer from a surfeit of clichés, Franklin with his son in a thunderstorm flying a kite to capture lightning, At his printing press, laboring over Poor Richards Almanac, Signing the Declaration of Independence, But, of course, the man was far more complex, And in nearlypages, Professor Brands makes full use of the opportunity to appreciate all of Franklins contradictions and peccadilloes, The First American paints a picture of a man, invariably regarded as a genius, who acquired numerous enemies as he made his way through a long life in the spotlight of public acclaim.
Yet what comes through, above all, is that Benjamin Franklin was a man almost everyone liked despite his abundant faults,

Printer, publisher, scientist, and much more

If we know anything at all from the history we learned in school, we look on Benjamin Franklin as a printer and publisher and a scientist.
He was, of course, all those things, But what we are unlikely to have learned is that Franklin retired from the printing business in, with nearly half his life ahead of him, And he was far more than the “electrician” known to the public who invented the lightning rod, In fact, Franklin was arguably the worlds most famous scientist, admitted to the Royal Society in the company of the empires leading “natural philosophers” as well as the French Académie des sciences.


“A true polymath,” Brands writes, “he was at home with experts in electricity, meteorology, geology, linguistics, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and politics, ” Though without even any secondary education, he received widespread acclaim and honorary degrees for his discoveries in numerous scientific fields, This new Benjamin Franklin biography delves into the mans work in many of these fields, and always in an engaging manner,

Franklin, the Renaissance Man

Franklin also distinguished himself as a supremely influential legislator, He was also the colonies, and later Americas, leading diplomat for three decades, In fact, Franklin was the only person who signed all four founding documents of the American Republic: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris establishing peace with Great Britain, and the U.
S. Constitution. He was also a notably successful businessman, Profits from his print shop in Philadelphia enabled him to set up printing companies in New York and North Carolina and to invest in land in Canada, He was a prolific inventor, responsible for the efficient Franklin stove, bifocals, and a musical instrument popular among his contemporaries as well as the lightning rod, And his writing on demographics and economics inspired both Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, In short, as this new Benjamin Franklin biography makes clear, he was a Renaissance Man, or the phrase loses meaning,

Fractured family relationships

Franklin “was the eighth child of his mother and the fifteenth of his father, ” Of Josiah and Abiah Franklins ten children, all boys, Ben was the youngest, Brands reporting suggests that his relations with his parents were strainedfor many years, he and his father never spokeand when he fled Boston to escape indenture with his oldest brother, James, he made an enemy for life.


In later years, Franklins own illegitimate son split with him over the Revolution, While still in favor in the English court, he had arranged for William to be named royal governor of New Jersey, But William sided with the socalled Loyalists once fighting erupted, breaking with his father, Franklin was, however, more successful with his longsuffering wife, Sarah, whom he abandoned for nearly eighteen years to serve overseas on behalf of the colonies and later the United States.
He also managed strong relationships with their daughter, Sally, and, after a rocky beginning, her husband, Richard Bache with Williams illegitimate son, Temple Franklin, whom he essentially adopted as his own and with Franklins own grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache.


New perspective on Americas colonial history

The history we learn in school saddles us with distortions, oversimplifications, and clichés, What, for example, do we know about the Boston Tea Party Were led to believe that a gang of colonists dressed as Indians and led by Sam Adams of the Sons of Liberty dumped tons of British tea into Boston Harbor to protest an import duty.
“Taxation without representation,” was the buzzword I learned then, But that taxthe Stamp Taxhad been in place for just one year inand was repealed seven years before the celebrated protest,

What really brought the colonists out to the harbor that night was a Parliamentary Act that required the colonists to buy their tea exclusively from agents of the British East India Company.
This ensured that local merchants would lose the lucrative tea trade, The Boston Tea Party had little to do with liberty and everything to do with commerce, And this is just one of a great many episodes in Americas colonial history that Professor Brands brings to new light in this outstanding book,

About the author

H, W. Brandsholds degrees from Stanford University, Reed College, Portland State University, and the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a PhD in History in, Since, he has taught history there, He now chairs the history department, He has published thirtyfive biographical histories and edited four more, .