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To request A Sourcebook On Benjamin Franklin: A Selection Of Readings To Accompany Humanities West’s “Benjamin Franklin And The Invention Of America,” Compiled By Andrew Linford please
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Download the Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of America Newsletter (pdf document)
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Suggested
Reading and Resources
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Note: Titles which are underlined may be purchased at Amazon.com by clicking on the title. A percentage of each purchase (or any other purchase made through these links) helps fund Humanities West programs.
Many of these books are also available
at local bookstores including Cody's
Books and Keplers, or at your local library. |
Recommended Short List
compiled by Charles Sieloff, PhD
There is a wealth of excellent material available on Benjamin Franklin, so the problem is really where to start, if your intellectual curiosity about the topic exceeds the limited amount of time you have available for personal research. The PBS Home Video mini-series, Benjamin Franklin (2002, 210 minutes), provides an excellent introduction, and is available from either Amazon or Netflix. Several good biographies have appeared in the last few years, but Edmund Morgan’s Benjamin Franklin (2002, 353 pp.) is probably the most accessible for a general reading public. If you would prefer a more comprehensive, and considerably longer, treatment, then turn to either Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003, 608 pp) or H.W. Brands’ The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2002, 784 pp.). Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004, 320 pp.), takes a more iconoclastic view of Franklin’s roots as a loyal British subject and a reluctant convert to the colonial cause, more admired abroad than at home until his somewhat belated rediscovery and canonization in the 19th century as the prototypical American. (The Isaacson and Wood books are also available as audio books from audible.com, as is a series of lectures by Brands entitled Benjamin Franklin: The Original American.)
Franklin was a popular and prolific writer himself, and his Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (2003, 160 pp., but available in many other editions) is still considered a classic, although it does not cover the later phases of his life. An excellent way to sample the full breadth of his writing is A Benjamin Franklin Reader (2005, 576 pp.), which was compiled and annotated by Walter Isaacson, and includes the complete Autobiography. (The Autobiography and other Franklin works are also available in audio editions from audible.com.)
Selected Readings
Compiled by Dee Andrews, Andrew Linford, Susan Petrakis, PhD, Jessica Riskin, PhD
Anderson, Douglas. The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin (1997)
Brands, H.W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2002)
Cohen, I.Bernard. Benjamin Franklin’s Science (1990)
Cohen. Benjamin Franklin: Scientist and Statesman (1975)
Franklin, Benjamin. All Benjamin Franklin’s writing can be found online at franklinpapers.org, a Yale University research project; digital edition funded by Packard Humanities Institute.
Franklin, Benjamin. “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain” (1725)
Franklin, Benjamin. Poor Richard’s Almanac (1733 – 1746)
Franklin, Benjamin. Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1754)
Franklin — Collinson, July 11th 1747
Franklin — Collinson, Sept. 1st 1747
Franklin — Collinson, April 29th 1749
Opinions and Conjectures, concerning the Properties and Effects
of the Electrical
Matter
Franklin, Benjamin. “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.” (1769)
Franklin, Benjamin. “Positions to be Examined, Concerning National Wealth” (1769)
Franklin, Benjamin. “Rules By Which A Great Empire May Be Reduced To A Small One” (1773)
Franklin, Benjamin. “A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks” (1790)
Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1790)
Franklin, Benjamin. The Art of Eating (1958, 2006)
Green, Stuart. Dear Doctor Franklin: E-mails to a Founding Father about Science, Medicine & Technology (2008)
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003)
Jennings, Francis. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Politician (1996)
Lemay, Leo, ed. Reappraising Benjamin Franklin: A Bicentennial Perspective (1993)
Lopez, Claude-Anne. My Life with Benjamin Franklin (2000)
Lopez and Herbet, Eugenia W. The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family (1975)
Middlekauff, Robert. Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies (1996)
Morgan, Edmund. Benjamin Franklin (2002)
Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005)
Oson, Lester C. Benjamin Franklin’s Vision of American Community: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology (2004)
Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and the Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1997)
Riskin, Jessica. Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (2002)
Sappenfield, James A. A Sweet Instruction: Franklin’s Journalism as a Literary Apprenticeship (1973)
Schiff, Stacy. The Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005)
Smith, Jeffery Alan. Franklin and Bache: Envisioning the Enlightened Republic (1990)
Schiffer, Michael. Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of the Enlightenment (2003)
Tise, Larry, ed. Benjamin Franklin and Women (2000)
Van Doren, Carl, ed. The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom (1950)
Waldstreicher, David. Runaway America: Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (2004)
Walters, Kerry S. Benjamin Franklin and His Gods (1999)
Wood, Gordon S. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004)
Wright, Esmond. Franklin of Philadelphia (1986)
DVD and CD
James, Dennis, Emerson String Quartet, Apell, David August von, Eister, Garry, and Faure, Gabriel. Cristal: Glass Music Through The Ages (2002)
Easton, Richard. “Benjamin Franklin” (2006)
Youtube Links
Glass Armonica
Part of the HBO miniseries on John Adams:
Other Websites
franklinpapers.org
Guide to Benjamin Franklin
Teaching Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin 300
pbs.org/benfranklin
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