The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin distills the complex and passionate intellectual strivings of the man whom David Hume called the first philosopher and great man of letters of the New World. Benjamin Franklin was a true renaissance man. A statesman and a diplomat, (he was the person to sign all four major documents of the founding of America - The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the Treaty of Peace with England) he was also an author, scientist, and inventor, but he preferred to be known as a printer. Much of his power of this autobiography lies in the fact that in it Franklin gives expression to three important facets of the American Dream: the ideal of material success, the possibility of moral regeneration and renewal, and the hope of social progress. Written as a guide for his son.