Author: Walter Isaacson
Translator: Mi-na Yoon
Publisher: Book21
H/C | 797 pages | 231*152mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
About This Book
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, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling
author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why
Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from
behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows
how he helped to define both his own time and ours.
He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat,
writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical --
though not most profound -- political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that
lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He sought practical
ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized
neighborhood constabularies and international alliances, local lending libraries
and national legislatures. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals
and two concepts of representation to foster the nation's federal compromise. He
was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany
Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with
France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. And he helped
invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and
philosophical pragmatism.
But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually
reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life
and in his writings, 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.
Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow "leather-aprons"
more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a
source of social strength, not as something to be derided. 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 colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of
Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a
statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous
relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and
his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to
create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the
twenty-first century.
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