Benjamin Franklin
By Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster, $30
576 pages, ISBN 0684807610

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REVIEW BY ROGER BISHOP

Benjamin Franklin's extraordinary and complex life—as a printer, entrepreneur, postmaster and diplomat, among other activities—had a profound effect on the development of the United States. As Walter Isaacson points out in his superb new biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, "The essence of Franklin is that he was a civic-minded person." For Franklin, self-reliance and civic involvement were interwoven: "The good men do separately," he wrote, "is small compared with what they may do collectively."

The initiator of many community ventures, Franklin masterminded lending libraries, fire brigades, night watchmen corps, hospitals and a college. These practical accomplishments were just as influential as his writings in building the foundation for the democratic republic embodied in the Constitution.

How does a biographer cope with such a singular subject? The task is made even more difficult when the subject is an accomplished inventor who enjoyed nothing so much as reinventing himself in his attempt to create a new American archetype. But Isaacson, the author of Kissinger: A Biography, brilliantly demonstrates a wide and insightful grasp of Franklin's life.

Isaacson's Franklin is a charming genius and an imposing historical figure, but a man who left much to be desired for those closest to him. While he had, in Isaacson's words, a "genial affection for his wife," it didn't keep him from spending 15 years of their marriage an ocean apart. He and his son William had a close relationship, but it couldn't survive their difference of opinion over the Revolution.

Franklin's dislike of "everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people," as well as his longstanding opposition to arbitrary authority, made him a trusted figure for many colonists.

In telling his story, Isaacson has crafted an impressive biography, a narrative that's balanced to give us a strong sense of the many aspects of its subject. His book deserves a wide readership.