FRANKLIN

What This Book Covers

1. Chapter One - The Tenth Son
2. Chapter Two - Running Away From Home
3. Chapter Three - The Printer King
4. Chapter Four - A Curious Mind
5. Chapter Five - The Lightning Rod
6. Chapter Six - Postmaster General
7. Chapter Seven - The Royal Problem
8. Chapter Eight - The Declaration Dude
9. Chapter Nine - The French Seduction
10. Chapter Ten - Treaty of Paris
11. Chapter Eleven - The Constitutional Grandfather
12. Chapter Twelve - The Slave Question
13. Chapter Thirteen - Death and Memory
14. Chapter Fourteen - Franklin’s America
15. Chapter Fifteen - The Self-Made Myth

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE The Tenth Son BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS born in a rented house on Milk Street in Boston in 1706, during a snowstorm. That’s not foreshadowing. That’s just what it was like to be the tenth son of a soap maker. Ten sons, seventeen children in total. His father, Josiah, made candles for a living, boiled tallow, prayed hard, and raised his children to do the same. There was no throne waiting for Benjamin. No inheritance. No expectations beyond obedience and survival. But even as a kid, Franklin didn’t play the role he was given. He read everything. He questioned everything. He was the one poking holes in logic, rolling his eyes at sermons, and asking why grown-ups stopped asking “why.”...