Book Franklin Biography

Online book - Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin and the acquisition of America, the arrival of this man in Philadelphia is one of the most famous pages of autobiographical literature: a seventeen-year-old fugitive, daring and shy at the same time, gets out of the boat and, moving along Market Street, buys three chubby buns. But wait a minute! There is something more here.

Remove several layers of time, and you will find it already sixty -five years old. He peers into the past, sitting in an English country house, and describes this scene, pretending to be writing a letter. And all in order for his son - an illegitimate son, ascended to the position of royal governor and claiming aristocracy, remembered his real roots. An attentive look at the manuscript will open another layer.

The proposal, which refers to the first trip on Market Street, an insert was made on the fields, telling how our hero has passed the house of his future wife Deborah Reed. And before us appears, even in just a few strokes, the image of a multifaceted person, whom the whole world knows as Benjamin Franklin. First, before us is a young man, then an elderly gentleman who appreciates himself from the height of the lived, even later - the main face of the memoirs of his own wife.

The brief self -description is successfully completed by the words “quite fairly” written by the elderly Franklin about himself: the self -irony and the pride that he experienced about his incredible achievements coexist in them amazingly [1]. Benjamin Franklin-“founding father”, friendly to everyone. George Washington’s colleagues hardly allowed himself to pat the harsh general on the shoulder, and we cannot imagine this.

Jefferson and Adams look just as frightening. But Ben Franklin, this proud city businessman seems to be created from flesh and blood, and not from marble; Rlit it - and he will turn to you from the historical scene, and his eyes behind the glasses will gleam. Without resorting to high rhetoric, he speaks with us from the pages of his letters, comic notes, autobiography, and his openness and smart irony are so modern that they can take possession of the minds today.

We see his reflection in the mirror of our time. In eighty-four years of life, he took place as a major American scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer and business strateg. In addition, he was not the most influential, but a very practical politician. And scientists: by launching an air snake, he proved the electrical nature of the lightning, and also invented the device with which it was possible to tame it.

He came up with bifocal glasses and autonomous stoves, Gulf Stream cards and the theory of infectious nature of the cold. He released various public projects, for example, the library in which books are issued at home, college, volunteer fire department, insurance association and funds involved in granting grants. He created such a model of foreign policy in which idealism and realism merge together, and in domestic politics proposed constructive programs to unite the colonies and create a federal model of the national government.

But the most interesting discovery ever committed by Franklin was his own personality, which he constantly rethought. Being the first outstanding publicist of America, in his works he constantly tried to create a new type of American, and took the material from his own soul. He carefully built his image, putting it on display of the public and improving it for descendants.

Partly Franklin did this in the name of the image. Being a young printer in Philadelphia, he drove paper rolls along the street on a cart to seem hardworking. Being an elderly diplomat in France, he wore a fur hat to get out of the wise man out of backwood. In the interval, he created the image of a simple, but purposeful merchant, jealously propagating virtue - diligence, frugality, honesty - inherent in a good shopkeeper and a useful member of society.

But the image he created was based on the real qualities of the individual. No wonder throughout his life he signed “B. Franklin, printer. " From such an attitude to life, the most, perhaps, important idea of ​​Franklin arose: the idea of ​​American national identity, based on the positive features and values ​​of the middle class. Since he instinctively adhered to democratic principles, which was not characteristic of all “founding fathers” and at the same time he was completely alien to snobbery, insofar lived in it in the wisdom of the average person.

He felt that the new nation would become strong due to the so -called middle class. In his instructions, Franklin glorified the qualities of this social layer, and his projects to strengthen the civil position and common good were created in order to pay tribute to the new ruling class - ordinary people.A difficult relationship between the different faces of Franklin’s character - ingenuity, innate wisdom, Protestant morality, free from the dogmas - and his principles of some, he firmly adhered to, in others he wanted to find a compromise that each new angle of view reflects and refracts the changing values ​​of the nation.

He was reproached in romantic periods, from it they made a hero during the heyday of entrepreneurship. Each era evaluated it in a new way, and by this assessment we can judge the era itself. A successful publisher and an unsurpassed network worker, inventive and curious, he would have felt at home in the conditions of the information revolution. His stubborn desire to be among the most gifted and successful people made him, according to the public critic David Brooks, “the founding father of Yappy”.

You can easily imagine what it feels like to drink beer with him after work, show him how the latest digital device is used, share the business planes of a new risky venture and discuss the latest political scandals or strategic ideas. He would laugh at the fresh jokes about the priest and the rabbi or the farmer's daughter. We would admire his ability to be at the same time serious and self -irony.

It would be clearer for us how exactly he tried to achieve balance in a difficult situation - in the pursuit of reputation, state, earthly virtues and spiritual values ​​[2].