Franklin

by David Freeman Hawke

FROM THE DUST JACKET Benjamin Franklin by David F. Hawke What manner of man was Benjamin Franklin? Contemporaries agreed he was a genius and the most beloved American of his time, but from that point they diverged in their opinions. " It is our own fault that we have not kept him," wrote David Hume as Franklin prepared to depart from Britain, adding that Franklin was " the first philosopher and indeed the first man of letters for whom we are beholden to [America]." On the other hand, Franklin, said Lord Hillsborough, is the most " hypocritical old rascal that ever existed-a man who, if ever one goes to hell, he will." In this meticulously researched study of Franklin's life down to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, David Freeman Hawke has drawn on the best from the flood of recent scholarly work to present the man in all his complexity. This is not a debunking study. The genial, witty, generous Franklin is here. So, too, is the practical businessman who managed at the age of forty-two to retire from his print shop and live the rest of his largely off investments. Here is also the man who sought to improve " the taste of the town" (Philadelphia); the promoter of the still flourishing Library Company, Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society. Hawke seeks to present sides of Franklin seldom emphasized in previous works-the visionary, the politician, the electrical experimenter. But as a historian steeped in America's colonial past, Hawke never abstracts Franklin from his times. Nor, on the other hand, does he ever allow the man to become buried in the momentous events in which he participated. Throughout the book he constantly poses a single question: What manner of man was Franklin? In the end, he leaves it up to the reader to judge for himself.

Genres: Biography

436 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

David Freeman Hawke was professor emeritus of American history at Lehman College of the City University of New York, where he taught from 1972 until his retirement in 1986.

Reviews

[Murray Kriner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably one of the most known, least understood member of our earliest founders of our nation. Hard to imagine a author who made his reputation, first as a printer, then as postmaster general, a secretary to the war effort against the French & Indian Wars, while being an adjunct to the British Governor to the Colonies, before packing his bags for France, to act as an ambassador for America to the French Crown. Many of his era did a great deal less, and earned lasting memory in popular minds of our historians, but still Ben Franklin finds a certain obscurity as a founder, often described as an unrefined, and a coarse sort of individual. He was none of those things, and this book dispels many of those notions engrained in the past. Mr. Hawke's writing has a natural story-line narrative that makes mention of all the key players, their responses in action and words, and the interplay between the various elements as they define their roles in our nation. Well written, and heavily researched from the details made apparent as the story takes its own natural coarse through the paths of our nation's earliest struggles to realize it potential worth in world events.