Librería Portfolio

In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America´s founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin´s life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, America´s best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard´s Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation´s alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin´s amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.



Table of Contents:
CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of America

CHAPTER TWO

Pilgrim´s Progress: Boston, 1706-1723

CHAPTER THREE

Journeyman: Philadelphia and London, 1723-1726

CHAPTER FOUR

Printer: Philadelphia, 1726-1732

CHAPTER FIVE

Public Citizen: Philadelphia, 1731-1748

CHAPTER SIX

Scientist and Inventor: Philadelphia, 1744-1751

CHAPTER SEVEN

Politician: Philadelphia, 1749-1756

CHAPTER EIGHT

Troubled Waters: London, 1757-1762

CHAPTER NINE

Home Leave: Philadelphia, 1763-1764

CHAPTER TEN

Agent Provocateur: London, 1765-1770

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rebel: London, 1771-1775

CHAPTER TWELVE

Independence: Philadelphia, 1775-1776

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Courtier: Paris, 1776-1778

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bon Vivant: Paris, 1778-1785

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Peacemaker: Paris, 1778-1785

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sage: Philadelphia, 1785-1790

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Epilogue

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Conclusions

Cast of Characters

Chronology

Currency Conversions

Acknowledgments

Sources and Abbreviations

Notes

Index