The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

"Gordon Wood does a brilliant job of showing how Franklin carefully constructed his own image and how Americans, especially in the early 19th century, began recreating that image and making him a folk hero....Professor Wood's feel for the social dynamics of the colonial era is unsurpassed, and it is reflected in this insightful masterpiece of analysis."

. . . a fascinating portrait of Franklin, not only as a forefather but as a man. "

A leading historian of the American Revolution offers an incisive portrait of the complex, often contradictory figure of Benjamin Franklin, a man who was at once the quintessential American and a cosmolitan lover of Europe, a one-time loyalist turned revolutionary, and an ambassador whose French diplomacy, crucial to the American cause, became a source of suspicion at home. Simultaneous.