Rating: 
Summary: The First American to tell the Franklin story.
Review: I was only on the prologue and already I had begun to slow down because I did not want the book to end. Ben Franklin would have been proud of H.W.Brands. Academicians don't write this well. They usually can't write at all. When it warms I'm going to make a special trip to Boston to walk into and observe the actual geography (Granery Cemetery, Milk St, South Church etc.) he has woven into his magnificent storytelling. I live just two hours away. I've seen all these places but not with the resolution I'm going to have on my next trip. As a broadcast journalist, for me,this book doubles as a seminar on good writing.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Biography
Review: It's been said that no event in political history brought together a company of more remarkable men than the founding of the American republic. And by lauding him as "The First American" in this fine biography, Professor Brands builds a case that there is no more outstanding representative of this charmed circle than the redoubtable Ben Franklin. Derided by some modern sophisticates for his cornball moralism, Franklin was in fact one of the most forward-thinking intellectuals of his era, and his contributions in the areas of science, politics, philosophy, and ethics have resonance still in the 21st century. Living a life that was the embodiment of 18th century rationalism, Franklin's love of reason imbued him with an indomitable optimism that charmed everyone who came into his orbit. Escaping the intellectual suffocation of Cotton Matther's Boston, where Franklin was born, he fled to Philadelphia as a young man and quickly achieved success in the printing business. He loved the practical things in life and, laboring happily to improve them, he established the first library in Philadelphia, the first fire brigade, the first college, etc. and - portentously - the first citizen's militia armed, at this time, in alliance with Britain against the French and their Indian allies who he saw as threatening the homes of himself and his neighbors. While only dabbling in scientific theory as one of his many sidelights, he produced breakthroughs that soon established this self-educated provincial as luminary within the leading scientific circles in Europe. He inevitably gravitated into local and provincial politics, and moved to England represent the Pennsylvania assembly in it's entreaties to the British government. Considering himself an impeccably loyal British subject, his analytic powers nonetheless soon led him the conclusion, ahead of many others, that complete independence for the American colonies was necessary and inevitable. This most exuberant of Anglophiles went on to become the most implacable of Britain's foe's. His personal charm and knowledge of European politics propelled him naturally into diplomacy, and he almost single-handedly engineered the critical alliance with France that that eventually won the war for the young nation. In the bitter factionalism that descended on the colonies after victory, the universal respect he enjoyed among the contending forces allowed him to facilitate the compromises that eventually brought about the improbable union. Anyone who reads American history finds there's some in it that doesn't square with our ideals as a nation. On the other hand, there are many stories that epitomize those ideals, and Franklin's life is one of these. This book is probably a little longer than it had to be, but even the unnecessary detail makes for enjoyable reading. Professor Brands has produced an excellent book, and I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Sterling quality
Review: Any man of Franklin's wit and character (and he WAS a character) will doubtless have a magnetic appeal for biographers. I do not know how many books have been written about the man. Nevertheless, I have never read any biography of Mr. Franklin, save for the one he penned himself, that can surpass this one. The author is eloquent, well-read, and obviously of keen intelligence. The book is not a dry, dull read, as many biographies are, but rather a kind of portrait. It is certainly one of the finest biographies (of anyone) that I have ever read. I recommend it whole-heartedly.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great American Life
Review: Although I do not agree with Author H.W. Brands, Professor of History at Texas A & M University, that Benjamin Franklin was the foremost member of the revolutionary-founding generation of the American republic (in my opinion, that accolade remains the due of George Washington), this is an excellent narrative of Franklin's long life and important contributions to his times. To say that Benjamin Franklin is one of the outstanding examples of the self-made man in American history is also to summarize his greatness in a nutshell, and Brands's presentation of Franklin's life from modest beginnings to national leadership is one of the book's most impressive strengths. Indeed, I preferred this aspect of the biography to the long and meticulous, but not always enlightening, narrative of Franklin's public career. On balance, this book has many more strengths than weaknesses.Franklin was born in Boston in 1705 and arrived in Philadelphia, the city in which he is primarily associated, in 1723. Even at age 18, Franklin was independent of his family, and he earned everything he achieved. With the help and encouragement of the provincial governor of Pennsylvania, Franklin became a printer, and that was the earliest source of his fame. His Pennsylvania Gazette, according to Brands, "grew into the leading newspaper" in Pennsylvania in the 1730s, and Franklin also published his famous almanacs. Franklin should come immediately to mind in any discussion of the greatest self-made Americans. Franklin's long and active life brought him into contact with virtually all of the great political, social, and cultural events of his time. For instance, in the late 1730s, Franklin met the English preacher George Whitefield, whom Brands describes as "the most charismatic man Franklin ever met - perhaps the most charismatic man to speak the English language during Franklin's lifetime." Franklin was a freethinker in religious matters and occasionally even anticlerical, but he befriended Whitefield. Part of Franklin's motivation was pragmatic: He published Whitefield's sermons and journals in several installments, as well as the theologian's memoirs. This is important because, as Brands writes, "many historians would see the roots of the American Revolution in the turmoil" produced by the Great Awakening, of which Whitefield was a leading proponent. Franklin was considered a great American sage throughout the comparatively short road to independence. At the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the American colonies were solid in their attachment to Great Britain. As early as the Stamp Act crisis of the mid-1760s, however, one group of opponents of the Act called themselves the Sons of Liberty. By the time of the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, parts of the colonies were in open defiance of the Crown. Independence was declared in July 1776. Franklin was an important actor in most of the events. Early in the book, Brands makes the key observation that, "[t]empermentally, Franklin was a skeptic rather than a rebel." That appears to be accurate, and, in my opinion, it undermines Brands's thesis that Franklin was the leader in the movement toward independence. But it helps to explain the value of Franklin's wisdom to that movement. Franklin was one of the most pragmatic men of this or any era. For instance, he had that rare and valuable quality which we now characterize as being a good listener. When the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in the spring of 1775, after the battles of Lexington and Concord, which effectively began the Revolutionary War, Brands writes that "Franklin disappointed some of those who knew him only by reputation...[because] [h]e struck no lightning bolts of rhetoric, preferring to sit silent while others orated. Washington cut a far more impressive figure in his soldier's uniform than Franklin in his philosopher's coat." By this time, Franklin was nearly 70, and I am inclined to think that his contributions may have been more symbolic than practical. Franklin was a member of the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence, but, according to Brands, he "had little to do with the first drafting of the document, which the committee left to" Thomas Jefferson. However, Brands writes, Franklin made a delightful, if apocryphal, contribution to the deliberations. When it was suggested that Congress's support of the Declaration be unanimous, the old, wise Franklin advised his colleagues, "we must indeed hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." After independence, according to Brands, worked on a new constitution for Pennsylvania and was elected by the Assembly to be president of its Committee of Public Safety. His most important role during the Revolutionary War, however, was as the leading member of the three-man diplomatic commission to France, which sought to obtain arms and an alliance. Brands writes: "Franklin's arrival in Paris was a personal triumph....Franklin offered something to almost everyone in France. He was a philosopher to the liberal philosophes, an ardent foe of Britain...to the conservatives who hungered for revenge against perfidious Albion, a wit to the habitués of the salons, a prophet of profits to the makers of weapons and outfitters of privateers." For nearly two years, Franklin and his fellow commissioners labored with only limited success, but, shortly after the battle of Saratoga in October 1777, the first important American victory in the war, the obtained an alliance, "pledging French support for American independence." It was, in many respects, the high point of Franklin's public career. How can one not be impressed by Benjamin Franklin? A successful, self-made businessman, perhaps the most accomplished amateur scientist of his era, an able and dedicated public servant, and the grey eminence to the revolutionary and founding generation. Even if Franklin was not the foremost American of his time, to be considered in the same light as George Washington, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson, to name just a few, was an extraordinary achievement for a man from humble origins. This may not be a great biography, but Franklin led a great American life.
Rating:
Summary: ALL-EMBRACING
Review: The First American is a magnificent sweeping work of this great man. I enjoyed it from cover to cover. My only constructive recommendation: 3 or 4 pages of maps would have done wonders, particularly the first half.
Rating:
Summary: A long life, well lived
Review: Sometimes it appears that Benjamin Franklin doesn't get the attention he deserves from American History courses. Often what many Americans know about him is confined to the Disney cartoon "Ben & Me", wherein he's portrayed as a somewhat eccentric inventor who befriends a mouse, and experiments with electricity by flying a kite in a thunderstorm. The reality is much, much more than that, and this new biography gives us the whole man, with all of his many accomplishments. After reading this long work, it is clear that American history would have taken an entirely different course if Franklin had not been the kind of Renaissance man he was, or had not used his prodigious talents in the service of his country. There is a lot of detail in this work, perhaps too much at times, but it does give as complete a picture of Franklin's life as we will see in this generation. With all of the political wrangling going on around us in this current election crisis, it's refreshing to step back and see the multitude of obstacles the Founding Fathers had to overcome to allow us to, more or less, peacefully settle a potentially divisive issue. Franklin deserves a lot of credit for how we are today, and this work more than adequately bestows it on him.
Rating:
Summary: A work worthy of its subject
Review: The First American is an exceptionally entertaining, insightful and informative work of historical biography. I'm not a speedy reader, but I consumed this book in a few weeks of train commutes to and from work (I have no idea what's been going on in the world since late September) and am now bereft that it is finished. I was struck by how much Franklin's legacy suffers from the iconography (another reviewer correctly called it historical caricature). Franklin the Myth, as it turns out, is far less than Franklin the Man. The Doctor is more than an American giant -- he is in the first tier in the pantheon of modern civilization's geniuses; right up there among Leonardo and Shakespeare and Gutenberg. A minor quibble: I was disappointed not to learn how Franklin's son William (a notorious Tory during the War of Independence)and his grandsons Temple Franklin and Benny Bache fared in their lives, and how subsequent generations of Franklin progeny coped with the giant's legacy. I know the book was the Life and Times (I most appreciated that Brands took "The Times" part of the equation as seriously as "The Life") but somehow I think the Doctor would have been tickled if the reach of his Life and Times had been extended to include the following generations. Again, a masterwork, for which I am grateful and privileged to have enjoyed as well as I did.
Rating:
Summary: A thorough and accessible account of a brilliant man
Review: Don't be intimidated by the length (700 pages without notes) of this fine book. It's an extremely well-written and engaging account of a life well lived. The author makes great use of Franklin's immense body of writing as well as his innate humor. The result is a wonderfully readable biography that brings forth both the man and his accomplishments. As a Founding Father, Franklin is naturally accorded respect, gratitude, and even awe by most Americans. His famous experiments with electricity and his numerous inventions from bifocals to the armonica are cause for amazement no matter what your nationality. His civic contributions include founding both the first lending library and the first fire station in America. His writings are numerous and visionary. One might expect a man of such accomplishments to be vain, driven, or aloof. But, as this book will make clear, Ben Franklin was first and foremost a delightful and humorous man. You'll enjoy getting to know him better. If you've an interest in historical biography or the history of the American Revolution, you simply must read this book. Even if you don't usually read history, there's no better re-introduction to this marvelous figure from your school book days.
Rating:
Summary: The complete Franklin
Review: If you think you have read the "definitive" Franklin biography, please read Brands'. This is a wonderful look at the person and, in many instances, the human side of the man we know as "Ben" Franklin. Once you read this book, you will always refer to him as "Benjamin" out of respect. A truly wonderful American human being. Mr. Franklin, more than any other person in our fight for independence, represents true individual thought and belief. Wonderful book. Give it as a gift this Christmas to the history lover in your family.
Rating:
Summary: A great work!
Review: What W.H. Brand has done is simply remarkable. He has taken the entire world of our Greatest American inventor, and focused his fine writing talents at making an otherwise dry subject, enjoyable, educational, non-technical and very difficult to put down. I think that this tome should become a must read for every budding MBA / Business Major.
|
