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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

By: Walter Isaacson
Narrated by: Nelson Runger
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About this listen

 In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin’s life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, America’s best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard’s Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation’s alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin’s amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century. Americas Historical Politicians Politics & Activism Revolution & Founding United States Founding Fathers Witty Royalty
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Interesting and informative, insightful and educational although very very long. It's like a 90 minute yoga class, you know it good for you but you cannot wait for it to finish

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This was my first interaction with a book about Benjamin Franklin that I found captured the great man's life and presented it in such a way that captures even the most casual readers interest in American history and of scientific research and his quick with made it even more enjoyable.

I would and have recommended this book to numerous people who don't know where to start in reading about him. Even though his own biography is quite the read I find this book quite engaging and evenly spaced.

A Highly Recommend Read

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Franklin, who in the past sometimes been portrayed with caricature-like simplicity, is given the depth he deserves by Isaacson.

Simply brilliant.

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My life was almost completely on hold as I was instantly pulled into the beautifully read and fascinating life of the man who could truly be called “the first American”.

A perfect biography, perfectly read.

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For people who want to buy this to read along with the book, I can confirm it’s 100% word for word as written in the book.

True to the book

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