Franklin on FranklinPaul M. Zall University Press of Kentucky, 14.12.2021 - 328 Seiten Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography ends in 1758, some thirty years before he died. Those three decades included some of the statesman's greatest triumphs, yet instead of including them in his memoir, Franklin spent the years continually revising his original text. Paul Zall has created a new autobiographical account of Franklin's entire life. By returning to a newly recovered early draft of the Autobiography, he strips away later layers of moralizing to reveal the story as Franklin first wrote it: how a poor boy from Boston used words and hard work to become America's first world-class citizen. To cover Franklin's career as a diplomat and as the only signatory of all three key documents of the American Revolution, Zall interweaves autobiographical comments from Franklin's personal letters and private journals. Franklin emerges as different from the common perception of him as a crafty "Man of Reason." His raw words reveal the bitter infighting among both British and American politicians and his personal struggle with his son's choice of the opposite side in the fight for the future of two countries. Without the veneer of second thoughts, his lifelong struggle to control his temper carries greater poignancy, as do his later years spent nursing his wounded pride. Susceptible to both fallibility and frustration, the honest Franklin depicted in his own words nevertheless remains an uncommon common man, perhaps even more so than previously thought. |
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... never employ'd, the numerous Family he had to educate keeping him close to his Trade, but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading People, who consulted him for his Opinion in Affairs of the Town & show'd him a good deal ...
... his own essay series by “Silence Dogood.” About this time I met with an odd Volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, and was much delighted with it. I thought the Writing excellent, &
... never proceeded far in that Science. And I read Locke on Human Understanding and the Art of Thinking by Messrs du Port Royal. Franklin remembers two influential classics: Locke on empiricism and Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole's Logic ...
... never using in any thing that may possibly be disputed, the Words, “Certainly, undoubtedly,” or any others that give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say, “I conceive,” or “I apprehend a Thing to be so or so,” “It ...
... never left home. I cut so miserable a Figure too, that I found I was suspected to be some runaway Servant, and in danger of being taken up on that Suspicion. However I proceeded the next Day, and got in the Evening to an Inn within 8 or ...
Inhalt
Facing Uncertain Philadelphia Future 17261727 | |
Venturing into Business | |
May 1728September 1730 | |
1749 | |
17481753 | |
17431753 | |
1754 | |
1756 | |
17561757 | |
17571762 | |
17571765 | |
17291730 | |
17311732 | |
17311754 | |
17361739 | |
17391740 | |
1740s | |
17661770 | |
17701774 | |
17741775 | |
17751785 | |
Notes | |
Index | |