Rating: 
Summary: Ben: 1st American
Review: Who was the first American? There are, I suppose, many ways to answer that. H.W. Brands provides a name, Benjamin Franklin. But more than that, he provides the reader with a life story second to none.The First American is finest biography I've ever read, though I confess I haven't read that many. It is thorough and complete, without skipping over years at a time the way some do. And I mean Brands no disrespect when I say that the bulk of the work that went into this book was performed by Franklin himself. His life is the prototypical rags to riches story about what makes America great. And Franklin was better at it than most. To return to the first point, I find it refreshing to find that Brands considers all of Franklin's life to be worth telling. Recent books I've reviewed about Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton are abbreviated, skipping over years at a time, jumping back and forth in time, and trying to bring attention to the author and not the subject. Here there is none of that. We trace Franklin's life in the same order he lived it, and if it was good enough for him, it should be good enough for us. On a similar theme, though Franklin was a highly political figure later in life, there's little attempt to try to try to pull him into one political camp today. Although Brands contrasts certain myths about Franklin - that he was the first capitalist in America for example - with his other activities and beliefs, he basically keeps us in the eighteenth century the whole time. But the real strength of the book, as I've said, is the subject. Ben Franklin really was a great American, and a fascinating one at that. Just for the pleasure of living vicariously through him I would recommend this work.
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