The Americanization of Benjamin Frank..., Gordon S. Wood
The Americanization of Benjamin Frank..., Gordon S. Wood
1 Rating(s)
List: $24.47 | Sale: $17.13
Club: $12.23

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Gordon S. Wood

Narrator: Peter Johnson

Unabridged: 10 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/24/2004


Synopsis

From the most respected chronicler of the early days of the Republic—and winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes—comes a landmark work that rescues Benjamin Franklin from a mythology that has blinded generations of Americans to the man he really was and makes sense of aspects of his life and career that would have otherwise remained mysterious. In place of the genial polymath, self-improver, and quintessential American, Gordon S. Wood reveals a figure much more ambiguous and complex—and much more interesting.

Charting the passage of Franklin's life and reputation from relative popular indifference (his death, while the occasion for mass mourning in France, was widely ignored in America) to posthumous glory, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin sheds invaluable light on the emergence of our country's idea of itself.

About Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood, the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University, received his A.B. from Tufts University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His 1970 book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 was nominated for the National Book Award and received the Bancroft and John H. Dunning Prizes. In 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Gordon lives in Providence, Rhode Island.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sean

Do I find Benjamin Franklin especially compelling (and maybe, perhaps, even a little bit sexy…fur caps and gout are hot, especially in tandem) because we, by random chance and against 365-to-1 odds, share a birthday? Absolutely not—that’s ridiculous, and I resent that you would even imply such a sil......more