Customer Reviews

Benjamin Franklin: Silence Dogood, The Busy-Body, and EarlyWritings (Library of America)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The wonderful Library of America (I hope all of you support it as well as buy their fabulous volumes) decided to split the 1,600 plus pages of their volume of the writings of Benjamin Franklin into two volumes. This first volume contains the earlier materials. It includes the famous Silence Dogood articles, the "Busy Body" essays, articles from his influential paper "The Pennsylvania Gazette", as well as other pamphlets, and miscellaneous writings. It concludes with some of the material he wrote while in London as a diplomat. My fear is that the second volume will be more popular because the material is more familiar. However, Franlin's earlier writings are quite important and should be read and valued just as highly.

Benjamin Franklin is one of the great icons of the American Founding. He is truly one of the essential men who built our nation and deserves every praise we can heap on him. When we see images of the founders, they are all shown as old men, not how old they were in 1776. Franklin was really a generation older than most of the firebrands who led the Revolution. He was seventy when he signed the Declaration of Independence (John Adams was 41, George Washington 44, and Thomas Jefferson 33 on July 4, 1776) and eighty-one when he signed our Constitution as a member of the delegation from Pennsylvania. He was an amazing man. He was a successful printer, inventor, philanthropist, revolutionary, diplomat, and all around student of the world.

This book is interesting to dip into and read just those portions that interest you, as well as reading its more than 800 pages front to back. It has great notes on the text that provide contextual and translation help as well as sources, a most interesting chronology of Franklin's long and productive life, and an index.

This certainly is a must have for your shelf on the history of America's Founding.