Benjamin Franklin (Yale Nota Bene)

A New York Times Bestseller A 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist A Washington Post Book World, Publisher's Weekly, and Los Angeles Times Book Review Best Book of the Year "Superb. . . . The best short biography of Franklin ever written."--Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books "None rivals Morgan's study for its grasp of Franklin's character."--Joseph J. Ellis, London Review of Books Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most remarkable figure in American history: the greatest statesman of his age, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the American republic. He was also a pioneering scientist, a bestselling author, the country's first postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant, a diplomat, a ladies' man, and a moralist--and the most prominent celebrity of the eighteenth century. Franklin was, however, a man of vast contradictions, as Edmund Morgan demonstrates in this brilliant biography. A reluctant revolutionary, Franklin had desperately wished to preserve the Briti