Read This: The Life of Benjamin Franklin

I can’t actually say that I’ve finished J. A. Leo Lemay’s The Life of Benjamin Franklin. For one thing, only the first two volumes of the projected seven have been published by the University of Pennsylvania Press yet, and I’ve only been able to dip into it in my spare time, so I’m still in the middle of the opening segment, Journalist: 1706-1730. But what I’ve read so far has been pretty amazing—no matter how cluttered you think the Franklin biography field is, or even if you’re not plugged into contemporary books on American history to care if there’s a Franklin glut, try to make time for these books on your reading schedule. (Realistically, though, you’d probably need a two-week vacation…but to me that would be a great vacation; your standards may vary.)

It’s a bit surprising to me that these two books (the second is Printer and Publisher: 1730-1747) haven’t gotten much review attention yet, especially considering that yesterday was the 300th anniversary of Franklin’s birth. I can’t say that’s an original observation on my part, since I only found out about the biography from Paul Collins’s Weekend Stubble blog, where he wondered, “That silence is the sound of critics quietly leafing through the volumes and taking notes for upcoming reviews…. right?” If so, they must still be busy scribbling, because so far the only paper to issue a review is the Washington Times, where even Franklin scholars acknowledge Lemay’s mastery (well, one scholar, anyway). That, and a Delaware paper mentioning last week that Franklin visited Delaware a couple of times, has been it so far. Meanwhile, Sidney Sheldon’s memoir got a full page in the New York Times Book Review. I mean, I know it takes a while to read 1,020 pages of smallish print, but heck, even I would’ve cleared out some room on my schedule if somebody had asked!

18 January 2006 | read this |