Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Pirmais vāks
Simon and Schuster, 2003. gada 31. jūl. - 608 lappuses
In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin’s life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, America’s best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard’s Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation’s alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin’s amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.

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Saturs

Chapter One Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of America
1
Boston 17061723
5
Philadelphia and London 17231726
36
Philadelphia 17261732
52
Philadelphia 17311748
102
Philadelphia 17441751
129
Philadelphia 17491756
146
London 17571762
175
Paris 17781785
382
Philadelphia 17851790
436
Chapter Seventeen Epilogue
471
Chapter Eighteen Conclusions
476
Cast of Characters
495
Chronology
503
Currency Conversions
507
Acknowledgments
509

Philadelphia 17631764
206
London 17651770
219
London 17711775
252
Philadelphia 17751776
290
Paris 17761778
325
Paris 17781785
350
Sources and Abbreviations
513
Notes
519
Index
567
About the Author
591
A Note on Type
593
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Populāri fragmenti

490. lappuse - The Body Of Benjamin Franklin, Printer, (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents torn out, And stript of its lettering and gilding,) Lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost, For it will, as he believed, appear once more, In a new and more elegant edition, Revised and corrected By THE AUTHOR.
478. lappuse - I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.
5. lappuse - Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance.
316. lappuse - MR. STRAHAN, You are a member of parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. — You have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. — Look upon your hands! — They are stained with the blood of your relations ! — You and I were long friends: — You are now my enemy, — and I am • Yours, B. FRANKLIN.
478. lappuse - I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.
114. lappuse - I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began tc soften, and concluded to give the copper.
443. lappuse - I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly...
40. lappuse - I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs ; then thought I, " If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you.
333. lappuse - Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,' with a figure of a hat subjoined ; but he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word ' Hatter ' tautologous, because followed by the words ' makes hats,
478. lappuse - On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it would, with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

Par autoru (2003)

Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu.

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