The contrast with the abstract considerations of scholastics and idealists could not be starker – he was an empiricist who experimented, not a theorist or categorizer.

He also used his insights to invent a number of devices, rarely for profit, that are in use today in one form or another (the lightning rod, the indoor stove as opposed to the less-energy-efficient fireplace). Isaacson explains his projects and puts them into context with masterful succinctness, avoiding excessive detail while presenting the essentials. He knew Hume, Gibbon, Adam Smith, and innumerable other luminaries as personal friends. He even pioneered a new way to do autobiography – about entrepreneurship in middle class life rather than religious or philosophical revelations.Īs a scientist, he embodied the Enlightenment, made fundamental discoveries – who can forget kite and key in the electrical storm? – and was feted as one of the great intellectuals of his age in Europe. He established his business with energy and audacity, creating numerous personae for himself and indeed an entire philosophy of practical accomplishment and moderation that was later despised as “bourgeois”. He started out as a printer and became America's premier writer as well as a media magnate by his mid-40s, when he essentially retired for the sake of scientific pursuits and later, politics and diplomacy.

Franklin is one of those protean figures, a founding father with a sense of humor, a dash of cynicism that surprises in its service to ideals, and an energy that can only astonish.įranklin had a pioneering career. Finally, there is the human being behind the hero, and let’s face it: every bio is about some kind of extraordinary person, even when they embody evil. Others include placing the subject in context, less as a reflection of the ideas in the air than as an agent shaping them. One of the arts of biography is to instill a fresh sense of wonder, particularly when it is about a figure you think you know well.

Ben franklin walter isaacson review