“The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin”, by H. W. Brands

 

784 pages, Anchor, ISBN-13: 978-0385495400

While in Paris in 1780 (Midnight, October 22^nd, pour être exact), Benjamin Franklin wrote Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout, in which the fictitious “Madame Gout” comes to call and, as she inflicts her inevitable torments upon his poor feet, chastises him for his indolence:

While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested.

This is just one example amongst many of Franklin’s spry sense of humor to be brought forth by H. W. Brands in his The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, a work with which even Madame Gout could find nothing to fault. After completing this biography, I found it difficult not to be thoroughly overwhelmed with the length and breadth of Franklin’s many, many accomplishments, seeing as he was a pioneer in many fields of American thought, from philosophy to physical science to political science, and all seemingly without effort.

Brands begins his tale of this familiar yet extraordinary American with an account of the pivotal event in Franklin’s life that led to his eventual break with Great Britain. He was at first a reluctant revolutionary, but this event – when he was called to appear before the Privy Council on January 29^th, 1774, at the Cockpit at Whitehall Palace – changed the course of his life and his loyalty. It is an excellent way to begin an account of Franklin’s life, for, this dignified servant of the Crown found himself subjected to a withering tirade from Alexander Wedderburn, the Solicitor General, and publicly humiliated. Before this humiliation Franklin was a proud Briton; after, he became a reluctant revolutionary.

From there, Brands moves in a conventional chronological manner, beginning with Franklin’s upbringing and eventual abandonment of Boston for Philadelphia where, alone and poor, his momentous life truly begins and does not let up until we arrive at his death (the only thing capable of stopping him, it would seem). The dizzying array of fields he dabbled in and made substantive contributions to is staggering. The First American achieves a level of detail that will allow you to appreciate the scope of Franklin's accomplishments within the time in which they occurred without ever getting bogged down in the dirty details, as Brands seems to have an appreciation for what Franklin really stood for. Franklin was not an ideal family man, and the book also gives a taste of this side of Franklin, as family seemed to play a lesser role in his life than his philosophical and scientific (and later, political) interests (one question the book did not answer for me was why he was known as “Dirty Ben” in some circles).

The book also gives a brief but not insufficient history of the American Revolution. Franklin played a pivotal and probably still underappreciated role in securing victory for the colonies. Why he and Alexander Hamilton are not considered at least “co-fathers” of the United States eludes me even more after reading this book, and I would have liked to have seen more as to why Franklin does not share Washington’s ubiquity in modern America. Reading H.W. Brands book will probably evoke similar questions to all readers.

The First American tells the story of a great human being, not just a great American, and while long it is well worth the effort. Franklin’s personal philosophy, elucidated brilliantly in the book, is still relevant today; by looking at his life and how he shaped it one can learn much about one’s own life and how to shape it.