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Title: The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood ISBN: 1-59420-019-X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 24 May, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Pleasant Reading
Comment: Being a fairly recent Eastern European immigrant I found the book very inspirational. Gordon Wood tells the story of an extraordinary self-made man in rapidly changing times. If I can relate to Benjamin Franklin, everyone else in this country can.
It is also very informative and a nice take on the times when America was founded as a nation. However, I will give it four starts, as I was a little disappointed with how little weight it was given to the Revolution snowballing events.
Rating: 5
Summary: Focused Biography of Founding Father
Comment: Gordon S. Wood has done another great job in his newest work of history, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. This is not in any way a definitive biography but instead is a more focused work, essentially examining Franklin's move from a lover of the British Empire into an American patriot and then, finally, into an American icon, possibly one of American's most resonant. Franklin is always a fascinating tale, as his own Autobiography has shown for centuries, and Wood captures the tale of artisan of lowly origins turned into a diplomat at foreign courts with great skill. The author's look at how Franklin became an icon after his death is very interesting. For those who missed reading the massive biography of Franklin two summers ago, this one is not to be missed.
Rating: 5
Summary: (Re)constructing Franklin
Comment: In the last few years, a number of thorough revisionist biographies have been published, which take Revolutionary Period luminaries and political players as their subjects, meeting with both public and critical success. Take for example David McCullough's John Adams, Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, not to mention Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life: each of these works have contributed to the recent trend in American historical studies to reexamine the American Revolution and its key players from a contemporary historical perspective. Into this mix, Gordon Wood-noted historian of the American Revolution and Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution-has released his latest work The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.
So, why do we need another biography of Franklin? Gordon Wood's answer: we don't. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin represents little effort on behalf of its author to attempt to provide or refashion a definitive portrait of Franklin's life from self-made printer to world-renown writer, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Wood's study does not set out to present a new or profoundly nuanced interpretation of Benjamin Franklin the man, but rather dissects the many-layered and convoluted construction of Benjamin Franklin the American symbol, the character of the communal American cultural imagination.
As Wood argues and carefully documents, Franklin's reputation-as canonized during the progressive times of the early 19th century and arguably extending to the present day-did not result from the mutual respect of and commendation from fellow members of the Revolutionary generation. Quite to the contrary, the Benjamin Franklin known to contemporary Americans-the industrious inventor, the master of the aphorism and clever turn of phrase, the self-made and quintessential "American" citizen-appears in Wood's work as a posthumous construction quite at odds with the Franklin so painstakingly working to protect his reputation after returning from his years abroad as a diplomat to both Great Britain and France. Wood, however, digs through the rhetoric of both Franklin's most venomous opponents and his most fervent and loyal supporters to uncover and unravel Franklin's precarious position during and after the Revolutionary War. In the course of doing so, Wood demonstrates that the "Americanization" of Benjamin Franklin owed more to his enduring international reputation, particularly in France, and to the popularity of his Autobiography, which necessarily put forward an image that Franklin himself would endorse.
Though Wood does present a rather thorough account of Franklin's life and achievements before and leading up to the American Revolution, the strength of The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin rests in its depth and analysis of Franklin's participation in the formation of the young American nation. Benjamin Franklin, as his contemporaries perceived him, remained an inscrutable and potentially dangerous emissary for American affairs. Probing letters, official statements and popular press accounts, Wood reconstructs the case both for and against such an interpretation. In effect, Wood understatedly performs an archeological investigation into the factors that most directly influenced the formation of an American popular identity and national work ethos embodied by Franklin, the results of which combine erudite intellectual inquiry with good American storytelling.
This type of historical study, in contrast to the more generalized biographical project, provides Wood the space to reflect upon a specific aspect of Franklin's life in a manner that exceeds the limitations of a more comprehensive survey of the statesman's markedly important and influential achievements and accolades. After reading The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, perhaps most significantly the reader comes away with not only a genuine empathy for Franklin, but also the recognition that, in the book's writing, his wit and candor have found a worthy foil in Wood's able hands.
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Title: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America by Edmund S. Morgan ISBN: 0393059200 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer ISBN: 0195170342 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills ISBN: 0618343989 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State by Max M. Edling ISBN: 0195148703 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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