The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

In place of the genial polymath, self-improver, and quintessential American, Gordon S.

Wood reveals a figure much more ambiguous and complex--and much more interesting.

Charting the passage of Franklin's life and reputation from relative popular indifference (his death, while the occasion for mass mourning in France, was widely ignored in America) to posthumous glory, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin sheds invaluable light on the emergence of our country's idea of itself.