The First American: The Life and Times of
Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brands
A Pulitzer Price Finalist. No surprise here.
First, a great biography. I can’t imagine there being a better one about this
particular individual. What makes this book extra special is the fact that you
become truly convinced that Benjamin Franklin was, as the title suggests, the
“First American”. At least the first
American of any significance. Most know that Franklin was one of our country’s
founding fathers. What a lot of people may not know is that Franklin was
considerably older than the majority of the other key players. So he lived a
full life before America’s independence, yet was one of the major figures that
initiated the process.
I’ve read several biographies by this author,
and one of his strong points is that, from time to time, he’ll take small
detours away from his subject matter, and give the reader a good primer of
other key events that were happening during the particular time. H.W. Brands
correctly realizes that in order for his readers to truly appreciate and
understand his subject, he or she needs to have a basic understanding of what
was going on in the individual’s world at the time. So we get to learn an awful
lot about Colonial America and of all of the events that led up to the
Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War.
Plus, Franklin was simply everywhere. Both in
geography and in the headlines. He’s spends a significant amount of time
representing his country as an ambassador to England and France. This allows us
to, again, understand a bigger picture of why Americans were so concerned with
independence. We read about several issues that England has (mostly with their
main adversary, France) at the time that caused them to put such financial
burdens on the colonists.
Had this book only focused on what Franklin
did, this book still would have been quite remarkable due to his brilliant
nature and restless mind. This retrospective, however, focuses an awful lot on
Ben Franklin the philosopher. We get to
read an awful lot of what the man’s thoughts were on such diverse topics as
women’s rights, religion, relationships with the crown, romance, and the
treatment of Indians (who we would now call ‘Native Americans’). He’s quite the
progressive, and was quite brilliant in expressing his thoughts. Many know that
Franklin’s first job was at a printing press. What many may not know is that
working for a printing press also meant being a main contributor to the
particular periodical that you were printing. Franklin was simply brilliant
with the written word, and it was just as much a joy to read about what he said
as it was reading about what he did.
Franklin stands out in my mind as one of those people who, if you had
one choice to go back in time, you would want to spend time in his company just
conversing with the man.
Yes, all of his claims to fames are here as
well. His ‘discovery’ of electricity, Poor Richard’s Almanac, the invention of
bi-focals, and the strange fact that this septuagenarian was quite the Lady’s
man while residing in Paris, France.
Like all of H.W. Brands’ work, I would
strongly recommend it not just because of the attention to the particular
subject, but also for becoming more learned about the particular period. I’m
sure there are better, more in depth books on the quest for American
independence, but this book is an awfully nice starting place – in addition to
being a great biography on Benjamin Franklin.
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