Benjamin Franklin Unmasked
Benjamin Franklin Unmasked

Author: Jerry Weinberger

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2005-09-07

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0700615849

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Moral paragon, public servant, founding father; scoundrel, opportunist, womanizing phony: There are many Benjamin Franklins. Now, as we celebrate the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, Jerry Weinberger reveals the Franklin behind the many masks and shows that the real Franklin was far more remarkable than anyone has yet discovered. Taking the Autobiography as the key to Franklin's thought, Weinberger argues that previous assessments have not yet probed to the bottom of Ben's famous irony and elusiveness. While others take the self-portrait as an elder statesman's relaxed and playful retrospection, Weinberger unveils it as the window to Franklin's deepest reflections on God, virtue, justice, equality, natural rights, love, the good life, the modern technological project, and the place and limits of reason in politics and human experience. Along the way, Weinberger explores Franklin's ribald humor, usually ignored or toned down by historians and critics, and shows it to be charming-and philosophic. Following Franklin's rhetorical twists and turns, Weinberger discovers a serious thinker who was profoundly critical of religion, moral virtue, and political ideals and whose grasp of human folly constrained his hopes for enlightenment and political reform. This close and amusing reading of Franklin portrays a scrupulous dialectical philosopher, humane and wise, but more provocative and disturbing than even the most hardboiled interpreters have taken Franklin to be-a freethinking critic of Enlightenment freethinking, who played his moral and theological cards very close to the vest. Written for general readers who want to delve more deeply into the mind of a great man and great American, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked shows us a massively powerful intellect lurking behind the leather-apron countenance. This lively, witty, and revelatory book is indispensable for those who want to meet the real Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin Unmasked
Benjamin Franklin Unmasked

Author: Jerry Weinberger

Publisher: American Political Thought

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Taking the Autobiography as the key to Franklin's thought, Weinberger argues that previous assessments have not yet probed to the bottom of Ben's famous irony and elusiveness. While others take the self-portrait as an elder statesman's relaxed and playful retrospection, Weinberger unveils it as the window to Franklin's deepest reflections on God, virtue, justice, equality, natural rights, love, the good life, the modern technological project, and the place and limits of reason in politics and human experience. Along the way, Weinberger explores Franklin's ribald humor, usually ignored or toned down by historians and critics, and shows it to be charming - and philosophic.".

Benjamin Franklin's Intellectual World
Benjamin Franklin's Intellectual World

Author: Paul E. Kerry

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson

Published: 2012-12-27

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1611470293

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume attempts to throw fresh light on two areas of Benjamin Franklin’s intellectual world, namely: his self-fashioning and his political thought. It is an odd thing that for all of Franklin’s voluminous writings—a fantastically well-documented correspondence over many years, scientific treatises that made his name amongst the brightest minds of Europe, newspaper articles, satires, and of course his signature on the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—and yet scholars debate how to get at his political thought, indeed, if he had any political philosophy at all. It could be argued, that he is perhaps the American Founder most closely associated with the Enlightenment. Similarly, for a man who left so much evidence about his life as a printer, bookseller, postmaster, inventor, diplomat, politician, scientist, among other professions, one who wrote an autobiography that has become a piece of American national literature and, indeed, a contribution to world culture, the question of who Ben Franklin continues to engage scholars and those who read about his life. His identity seems so stable that we associate it with certain virtues that apply to the way we live our lives, time management, for example. The image of the stable figure of Franklin is applied to create a sense of trust in everything from financial institutions to plumbers. His constant drive to improve and fashion himself reveal, however, a man whose identity was not static and fixed, but was focused on growth, on bettering his understanding of himself and the world he lived in and attempted to influence and improve.

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Gordon S. Wood

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2005-05-31

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1101200901

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“I cannot remember ever reading a work of history and biography that is quite so fluent, so perfectly composed and balanced . . .” —The New York Sun “Exceptionally rich perspective on one of the most accomplished, complex, and unpredictable Americans of his own time or any other.” —The Washington Post Book World From the most respected chronicler of the early days of the Republic—and winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes—comes a landmark work that rescues Benjamin Franklin from a mythology that has blinded generations of Americans to the man he really was and makes sense of aspects of his life and career that would have otherwise remained mysterious. In place of the genial polymath, self-improver, and quintessential American, Gordon S. Wood reveals a figure much more ambiguous and complex—and much more interesting. Charting the passage of Franklin’s life and reputation from relative popular indifference (his death, while the occasion for mass mourning in France, was widely ignored in America) to posthumous glory, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin sheds invaluable light on the emergence of our country’s idea of itself.

The Real Benjamin Franklin
The Real Benjamin Franklin

Author: Jessica Gunderson

Publisher: Compass Point Books

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 65

ISBN-13: 075655893X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Benjamin Franklin led a productive life, but is it possible his accomplishments include everything attributed to him? The answer is yes, for the most part. He never did suggest the wild turkey should be the national symbol of the United States. He did, however, lend his wisdom to the founding of the country, and he was the only person to sign four of the documents most critical to the creation and character of the nation."--Provided by publisher.

The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin
The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Lorraine Smith Pangle

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2007-09-28

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780801886669

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Franklin's political writings are full of fascinating reflections on human nature, on the character of good leadership, and on why government is such a messy and problematic business. Drawing together threads in Franklin's writings, Lorraine Smith Pangle illuminates his thoughts on citizenship, federalism, constitutional government, the role of civil associations, and religious freedom.

Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire
Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire

Author: Carla Mulford

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0199384193

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A study of Franklin's writings on the British Empire and its relationship to the British North America, Mulford assesses the founding father's thoughts on economics, society, politics, and the environment.

Bolt Of Fate
Bolt Of Fate

Author: Tom Tucker

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2009-04-24

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0786739428

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Every schoolchild in America knows that Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1752. Electricity from the clouds above traveled down the kite's twine and threw a spark from a key that Franklin had attached to the string. He thereby proved that lightning and electricity were one. What many of us do not realize is that Franklin used this breakthrough in his day's intensely competitive field of electrical science to embarrass his French and English rivals. His kite experiment was an international event and the Franklin that it presented to the world -- a homespun, rural philosopher-scientist performing an immensely important and dangerous experiment with a child's toy -- became the Franklin of myth. In fact, this sly presentation on Franklin's part so charmed the French that he became an irresistible celebrity when he traveled there during the American Revolution. The crowds and the journalists, and the ladies, cajoled the French powers into joining us in our fight against the British. What no one has successfully proven until now -- and what few have suggested -- is that Franklin never flew the kite at all. Benjamin Franklin was an enthusiastic hoaxer. And with the electric kite, he performed his greatest hoax. As Tucker shows, it was this trick that may have won the American Revolution.

Unmasked
Unmasked

Author: L. Brent Bozell III

Publisher: Humanix Books

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1630061166

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Lecturer, syndicated columnist, television commentator, debater, marketer, businessman, bestselling author, publisher and activist, L. Brent Bozell III is one of the most outspoken and effective national leaders in the conservative movement today. As Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Mr. Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America, and is uniquely positioned to offer this blazing critique of bias of all types in the national media and how it damages American democracy. By analyzing the coverage of the rise of Donald Trump and his presidency, Bozell explains all the different types of bias that can occur and exposes the insidious effects. ENEMIES LIST will also examine the campaigns for the 2018 midterms – and the results – which will provide the most comprehensive, detailed, and explosive analysis to date of how the media stokes divisiveness in American politics.