Franklin on Franklin

"Read a chapter from the book. "A strikingly revealing, unvarnished portrait of one of our most beloved and seemingly benign Founding Fathers." — Booklist Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography ends in 1758, some thirty years before he died, yet those three decades included some of the statesman's greatest triumphs. Paul Zall has created a new autobiographical account of Franklin's entire life. By returning to a newly recovered early draft of the Autobiography, he strips away later layers of moralizing to reveal the story as Franklin first wrote it: how a poor boy from Boston used words and hard work to become America's first world-class citizen. To cover Franklin's career as a diplomat and as the only signatory of all three key documents of the American Revolution, Zall interweaves autobiographical comments from Franklin's personal letters and private journals. Franklin emerges as different from the common perception. His raw words reveal the bitter infighting among both British and American politicians and his personal struggle with his son's choice of the opposite side in the fight for the future of two countries. Without the veneer of second thoughts, his lifelong struggle to control his temper carries greater poignancy, as do his later years spent nursing his wounded pride. Susceptible to both fallibility and frustration, the honest Franklin depicted in his own words nevertheless remains an uncommon common man, perhaps even more so than previously thought.

Library Journal

Like the author's previous book, Lincoln on Lincoln (Univ. Pr. of Kentucky, 2001), this recent volume contains various writings that delineate the former president's life and ideas. The first 23 chapters comprise the first draft of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which he revised over an 18-year period, but here Zall (research scholar, Huntington Library) strips away Franklin's later misgivings, cautious revisions, and other changes to reveal the document as it was originally composed. Zall covers the remaining 43 years of his subject's life in the last six chapters by reprinting letters and other documents. The many contradictions of Franklin's character are on prominent display throughout the volume. All the materials contained here are already available in heavily annotated scholarly editions, including some by Zall himself (e.g., Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds, Criticism, 1986, coedited with J.A. Leo Lemay). The present volume is aimed at general readers and does an excellent job of allowing Franklin's own words to reveal the major events and emotions in his life. Recommended for public libraries. T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.