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Title: The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood, Peter Johnson ISBN: 1-56511-886-3 Publisher: Highbridge Audio Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 8 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Scholarly Biography that Gets Behind the Franklin Myths
Comment: Benjamin Franklin is often considered the quintessential American. A recent best-selling biography of Franklin is entitled "The First American," and many other biographers have also played up the Americanness of his life. His story is a familiar one to most Americans. Franklin overcame his lowly beginnings through a combination of street smarts and hard work. He was intelligent without being theoretical. He was a social joiner but also wary of traditional class distinctions. Because of this, he seemed to typify what many modern Americans feel is most distinctive about their nation.
Historian Gordon S. Wood splashes cold water on these common assumptions of Franklin's life. Wood shows that in many ways Franklin was not typical of his fellow Americans at all. Once he made himself a success, for example, he stopped working and began to imitate a gentleman. After Franklin moved to Europe and got a taste of the civilized life, it was difficult for him to break away from it and return to America. He often misjudged the opinion of his fellow Americans, sometimes leading too far in front of them and sometimes following too far behind. As a result, he was far more popular in Europe than he was in his home land. After his death, the public grieving in the U.S. was mild compared to that of other revolutionary leaders.
Wood's book is largely a conventional biography that is distinctive from other Franklin biographies only in its interpretation. Wood sees the Sage of Philadelphia as a proto-American, someone who became American only in retrospect as more and more nineteenth-century Americans began to lead lives similar to Franklin's. Like him, they worked in the trades and strove for social respectability and financial success while also maintaining a working class identity. As these self-made men began to predominate, Franklin's life became a model for them, and the popularity among Americans that he never saw in his lifetime became his.
Rating: 5
Summary: The definitive Franklin
Comment: Gordon S. Wood is such a fabulous writer and such a skilled historian that it's impossible to not be impressed by his work. He writes history that reads so smoothly and argues so gracefully that it's impossible to not be convinced. Wood has a comfort zone that he likes to operate in, and all of his books are resident in this zone. It has two components. First, he constructs all his arguments in a "before" and "after" style in order to frame the central points of his thesis. He says, once upon a time things were like this. Then a critical event happened that changed everything. That event, for Wood, is always the Peace of Paris in 1783. But it's not the military or political or economic consequences of the Revolution that Wood insists changed everything. It's the change in social structure and, more to the point, the blurring of social class lines due to social mobility (both physical and economic) that moved America and its people from feudalism to democracy. THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION went something like this, and the current biography of Franklin puts him in this context. It's a view of Franklin in terms of social class. Now, I'm sure Dr. Wood would argue with me, saying that I reduce his theses down into far too simple terms. Granted, I'm not criticizing him. This work, as his others, is a penetrating study and should attract much scholarly and critical acclaim.
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.
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Title: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Publisher: The Penguin Press HC 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 (Pivotal Moments in American History) 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: The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence by T. H. Breen ISBN: 0195063953 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek ISBN: 0374175268 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: 15 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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