The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

By: Gordon S. Wood

Narrated by: Peter Johnson

Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.

The problem with this beloved notion of Franklin's quintessential Americanness, Gordon Wood shows us in this marvelous, revelatory book, is that it's simply not true. And it blinds us to the no less admirable or important but far more interesting man Franklin really was and leaves us powerless to make sense of the most crucial events of his life. Indeed, thinking of Franklin as the last American would be less of a hindrance to understanding many crucial aspects of his life: his preoccupation with becoming a gentleman; his longtime loyalty to the Crown and burning ambition to be a player in the British Empire's power structure; the personal character of his conversion to revolutionary; his reasons for writing the Autobiography; his controversies with John and Samuel Adams and with Congress; his love of Europe and conflicted sense of national identity; the fact that his death was greeted by mass mourning in France and widely ignored in America.

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin is a landmark work, a magnificent fresh vision of Franklin's life and reputation, filled with profound insights into the Revolution and into the emergence of America's idea of itself.

©2004 Gordon S. Wood (P)2004 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

• Audie Award Finalist, Non-Fiction (unabridged), 2005

" "A fascinating portrait of Franklin, not only as a forefather but as a man." (Publishers Weekly)
"This superbly written work provides a fresh perspective on a justly admired but enigmatic figure." (Booklist)
"Engaging....A skilled writer with both Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes to his credit, he [Wood] possesses as profound a grasp of the early days of the Republic as anyone currently working." (The New York Times Book Review)

Good read

This book is pretty interesting and teaches a lot about Franklin but I only read it for a class.

Franklin Would Have Loved This Book

In far less space than the typical doorstop tome, Wood illuminates Franklin's long professional and intellectual trek to become the most "American" of the founders. Anyone who relies on their high school or college understanding of Franklin will profit from Wood's treatment of a man who was truly a lifelong learner, but one careful never to be too far out in front of what the traffic would bear. Insufficiently appreciated in his time, Franklin turns out to be every bit as much responsible for the success of American independence even if his vision of how to frame the Constitution of the new nation did not emerge as the orthodox view. A great listen.

Another fantastic book by Gordon S. Wood

If I had to choose a favorite historian, it would be Gordon S. Wood. His scholarship is masterful, and he combines it with a lovely literary style that is very accessible to the general reader. This book on Benjamin Franklin - not a complete biography, but rather an exploration of how Franklin came to be the archetypal American - is a wonderful example. Read it to learn how Franklin's thinking about the British empire and and society, as well as the ancient aristocratic denigration of work, evolved into the uniquely American elevation of the "middling" classes that was readily apparent by the time of Alexis de Toqueville.

Informative and Engaging

This book was well organized, thoughtfully expressed, and engagingly written. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Benjamin Franklin

I liked it but it was longwinded and jumped back and forth over the lifetime of Franklin. It had a lot of information though I found to be very interesting and the narrator did a wonderful job!