Benjamin Franklin: An American Life | Walter Isaacson

The Printer Who Became a Scientist, a Diplomat—and a Founding Father

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.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. 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. 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.

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Table of Contents

1. Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of America
2. Pilgrim’s Progress: Boston, 1706–1723
3. Journeyman: Philadelphia and London, 1723–1726
4. Printer: Philadelphia, 1726–1732
5. Public Citizen: Philadelphia, 1731–1748
6. Scientist and Inventor: Philadelphia, 1744–1751
7. Politician: Philadelphia, 1749–1756
8. Troubled Waters: London, 1757–1762
9. Home Leave: Philadelphia, 1763–1764
10. Agent Provocateur: London, 1765–1770
11. Rebel: London, 1771–1775
12. Independence: Philadelphia, 1775–1776
13. Courtier: Paris, 1776–1778
14. Bon Vivant: Paris, 1778–1785
15. Peacemaker: Paris, 1778–1785
16. Sage: Philadelphia, 1785–1790
17. Epilogue
18. Conclusions

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非小說 Non-Fiction

人物傳記 Biography

美國歷史 American History

美國開國元勳 Founding Fathers

美國革命 American Revolution

科學史 History of Science

發明家 Inventors

政治人物傳記 Political Biography

美國早期歷史 Early American History