Decrying the habit of American biographers to mythologize their subjects, Sydney George Fisher sets out to write a book about the True Benjamin Franklin. Of Franklin, he says that the human in him was so interlaced with the divine that the one dragged the other into light. Fisher s book is a unique biography of Benjamin Franklin, written by an opinionated man who grew up directly in the wake of Franklin s influence on American culture.--

Benjamin Franklin was curious about the world around him. He had wide and varied interests that led him to become a printer, a writer, an inventor, a statesman, and eventually one of the fathers of our nation. This book introduces Benjamin Franklin to the youngest readers and inspires them to learn about the world. Illustrations.

Draws on Franklin's extensive writings to provide a portrait of the statesman, inventor, and Founding Father.

The first full-scale biography of Franklin in over 60 years! This fully documented account of the most versatile man of his age paints a lively portrait of the writer who invented the lightning conductor; the politician who spent years as an emissary in London trying to prevent the Revolutionary War; and the statesman who served as the US representative in Paris during the war, intriguing for French aid and American victory. A masterly work. The first full-scale biography of Franklin in over 60 years! This fully documented account of the most versatile man of his age paints a lively portrait of the writer who invented the lightning conductor; the politician who spent years as an emissary in London trying to prevent the Revolutionary War; and the statesman who served as the US representative in Paris during the war, intriguing for French aid and American victory. A masterly work.

Franklin's Autobiography has received widespread praise, both for its historical value as a record of an important early American and for its literary style. This work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written. This title is based on the Harvard Classics edition.

A major new biography, illuminating the great mystery of Benjamin Franklin’s faith Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the “thorough deist” who emerges in his autobiography. As Thomas Kidd reveals, deist writers influenced Franklin’s beliefs, to be sure, but devout Christians in his life—including George Whitefield, the era’s greatest evangelical preacher; his parents; and his beloved sister Jane—kept him tethered to the Calvinist creed of his Puritan upbringing. Based on rigorous research into Franklin’s voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin’s life.