Product Description

Edited, with an Introduction, by R.J. Wilson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1126139 in Books
• Published on: 1964-09-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From AudioFile
In the face of recent revisionist efforts to demean Franklin, it's well to return to the most renowned of the Franklin biographies and winner of the 1938 Pulitzer Prize. There's nothing extraordinary about the narration. Reader Patrick Cullen proceeds with clear enunciation at a steady pace, injects slight emotion in the few places where appropriate and generally delivers as straightforward a reading as one can expect. One never expects histrionics in a text such as this, and one is not disappointed here. The text itself is enriching and the presentation perfectly adequate. D.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
"The acting is superb." -- LA Times

"This well-known work by one of our nation's founding fathers was certainly given to the right individual to narrate. Fredd Wayne, whose one-man show, "Benjamin Franklin, Citizen," has also been recorded by Audio Editions, seems to have captured Franklin's persona." -- Dick Richmond, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 19, 1997

Review

"Reasonably priced, comprehensive edition with good selection of other writings."--Virginia Caris, George Washington University
"I really like this edition because of the variety of Franklin's writings represented here. The affordability of this text is greatly appreciated by the students as well."--Lynn Searfoss, Purdue University

Customer Reviews

an important work - should be read by all young men
I have read this book myself at least twice. This book was purchased as a graduation present for a nephew. I wish someone had made me read this book at the age of 13. Franklin is quite the character. There are a lot of controversies surrounding his life, but for the purpose of instruction, I prefer to quit the debating society. This fellow is the first native born genius of record produced in this country. He may have painted a rosy picture of his life, but any of us would in an autobiography. If you want a critical examination of his life, check out some of the excellent athoritive biographies available. If you want inspiration, read this. Most inspiring are the roles that thrift and hard work played in his success and his practical approach to striving for "moral perfection".

Non-Fiction
This says Norton Critical Edition, so, of course, designed for academic study.

A man that of course did a whole pile of stuff and came up with a whole pile more.

Entertaining at times, and lecturing at others, as you might expect from someone that had been in a privileged position.

Franklin's informal account of his remarkable life
In many ways, this is, to someone coming to it for the first time, a very surprising book. For one thing, it is amazingly incomplete. Franklin is, of course, one of the most famous Americans who ever lived, and his accomplishments in a wide array of endeavors are a part of American lore and popular history. A great deal of this lore and many of his accomplishments are missing from this account of his life. He never finished the autobiography, earlier in his life because he was too busy with what he terms public "employments," and later in life because the opium he was taking for kidney stones left him unable to concentrate sufficiently. Had Franklin been able to write about every period of his life and all of his achievements, his AUTOBIOGRAPHY would have been one of the most remarkable documents every produced. It is amazingly compelling in its incomplete state.
As a serious reader, I was delighted in the way that Franklin is obsessed with the reading habits of other people. Over and over in the course of his memoir, he remarks that such and such a person was fond of reading, or owned a large number of books, or was a poet or author. Clearly, it is one of the qualities he most admires in others, and one of the qualities in a person that makes him want to know a person. He finds other readers to be kindred souls.

If one is familiar with the Pragmatists, one finds many pragmatist tendencies in Franklin's thought. He is concerned less with ideals than with ideas that work and are functional. For instance, at one point he implies that while his own beliefs lean more towards the deistical, he sees formal religion as playing an important role in life and society, and he goes out of his way to never criticize the faith of another person. His pragmatism comes out also in list of the virtues, which is one of the more famous and striking parts of his book. As is well known, he compiled a list of 13 virtues, which he felt summed up all the virtues taught by all philosophers and religions. But they are practical, not abstract virtues. He states that he wanted to articulate virtues that possessed simple and not complex ideas. Why? The simpler the idea, the easier to apply. And in formulating his list of virtues, he is more concerned with the manner in which these virtues can be actualized in one's life. Franklin has utterly no interest in abstract morality.

One of Franklin's virtues is humility, and his humility comes out in the form of his book. His narrative is exceedingly informal, not merely in the first part, which was ostensibly addressed to his son, but in the later sections (the autobiography was composed upon four separate occasions). The informal nature of the book displays Franklin's intended humility, and for Franklin, seeming to be so is nearly as important as actually being so. For part of the function of the virtues in an individual is not merely to make that particular person virtuous, but to function as an example to others. This notion of his being an example to other people is one of the major themes in his book. His life, he believes, is an exemplary one. And he believes that by sharing the details of his own life, he can serves as a template for other lives.

One striking aspect of his book is what one could almost call Secular Puritanism. Although Franklin was hardly a prude, he was nonetheless very much a child of the Puritans. This is not displayed merely in his promotion of the virtues, but in his abstaining from excessiveness in eating, drinking, conversation, or whatever. Franklin is intensely concerned with self-governance.

I think anyone not having read this before will be surprised at how readable and enjoyable this is. I think also one can only regret that Franklin was not able to write about the entirety of his life. He was a remarkable man with a remarkable story to tell.