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Start giftingBenjamin Franklin
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Learn moreFrom his beginnings as a journalist at age sixteen to his retirement from public affairs at eighty-two, there was no break in Benjamin Franklin’s activity and accomplishments. A writer, inventor, and statesman, he remains unsurpassed in the range of his natural gifts and the important uses to which he put them.
In this Pulitzer Prize–winning biography, Carl Van Doren incorporates materials from Franklin’s letters, manuscripts, journals, and published works to give the most accurate and comprehensive portrait ever written of this great American.
Carl Van Doren (1885–1950) was a critic and Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois and, in 1911, a doctorate from Columbia University, where he went on to teach for nineteen years.
John Lescault, a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Catholic University of America. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works in theater.
Reviews
“The most comprehensive and the most intelligently sympathetic biography of Franklin we have.”
“A review of Mr. Van Doren’s Benjamin Franklin can be nothing short of a eulogy. The greatest American has found a biographer worthy of him.”
“The picture is final, containing all the lights and shadows, all the episodes and the achievements of the most vital personality of his day.”
“Patrick Cullen’s narration [is] suitably smart, spirited, and gentle…There is inspiration here at every turn, and one is left feeling the tragedy of America is that Franklin didn’t live to be 300—at least. Highly recommended for all collections.”
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