Isaacson describes the business achievements in depth and goes on to note the complexities of Franklin's political viewpoints. The author states that Franklin's ambition and natural talent as a printer eventually earned the statesman a publishing empire. However, Isaacson details that Franklin's inherently jovial nature came out in multiple meaningful friendships, particularly in terms of young women that the statesman genuinely engaged with intellectually. Franklin not only missed the weddings of both his daughter and his son but wasn't present at the death of his wife as a father, he projected a certain coldness. In terms of Franklin's personal character, the author writes that the statesman possessed a sense of sociability in contrast to struggling somewhat with close intimacy. The author particularly argues that Franklin should get thought of as an important figure in the history of science.
Franklin, the author argues, "has been vilified in romantic periods and lionised in entrepreneurial ones" since "each era appraises him anew" and thus "in doing so reveals some assessments of itself." In broad terms, Isaacson describes Franklin as a quintessential figure of the Age of Enlightenment as well as one seen as a prototypical American by those to which the very concept was new. Isaacson notes that Franklin's reputation has shifted based on time and place given the statesman's achievements and personality. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.This section needs expansion. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris.
In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity. America's first great publicist, he was consciously trying to create a new American archetype. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings.
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