Benjamin Franklin - No cost library

 Benjamin Franklin

   Author(s): Edmund S. Morgan 

        Publisher: Yale University Press, Year: 2002   

                                        

 Description: 

Benjamin Franklin is probably the most outstanding figure in American history. In addition to founding both the United States and oldest museum, he also supported the United States in the form of an ambassador during the Civil War. He was also a pioneering chemist, a best-selling poet, the country's first postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant, a diplomat, a ladies' man, and a moralist - and the most famous celebrity of the 18th century. A contradictory figure, Benjamin Franklin was, nevertheless, an inarguably important pioneer of the founding era's worlds. Thomas Jefferson had hoped to appease the British Royal family, and he mourned the imbalance of influence as the years progressed and the United States of America continued to rise and gain independence from England. Though his enthusiasm for science was very intense, he regarded his breakthroughs in science as secondary to his civic duties. Thomas Jefferson, as the only one to have directly drafted both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was unsure whether the new American government would continue to stick too similar to the framework that he himself had built. In an effort to unravel the enigma of Franklin's character, Morgan reveals that he was the rare person who consistently put the public interest above his own interests..