At age 17, Franklin ran away from his apprenticeship to Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer. By age 16, Franklin was contributing essays (under the pseudonym Silence Dogood) to a newspaper published by his brother. In 1718, at age 12, he was apprenticed to his older brother James, a Boston printer. Constitution (1787).įranklin’s formal education was limited and ended when he was 10 however, he was an avid reader and taught himself to become a skilled writer. Franklin was the eighth of Abiah and Josiah’s 10 offspring.ĭid you know? Benjamin Franklin is the only Founding Father to have signed all four of the key documents establishing the U.S.: the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), the Treaty of Paris establishing peace with Great Britain (1783) and the U.S. Franklin’s mother was Abiah Folger (1667-1752) of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Josiah’s second wife. His father, Josiah Franklin (1657-1745), a native of England, was a candle and soap maker who married twice and had 17 children. 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.Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in colonial Boston. 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.
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. 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.
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