Historian Gordon S. Wood has an insightful essay concerning Benjamin Franklin in the current The New York Review of Books. Unfortunately, only the first paragraph (which is duplicated here) is online without paying a charge of $4. You can buy the whole issue at the newstand for $4.50. (NewMexiKen has a subscription to the print edition.)
Americans cannot seem to get enough of Benjamin Franklin. During the past few years we have had several Franklin biographies, of which Walter Isaacson’s is the most recent and the finest; and more studies of Franklin are on the way. Part of the reason for this proliferation of Franklin books is the approaching tricentennial celebrations of his birth in 1706. But this isn’t enough to explain our longstanding fascination. He is especially interesting to Americans, and not simply because he is one of the most prominent of the Founders. Among the Founders his appeal seems to be unique. He appears to be the most accessible, the most democratic, and the most folksy of these eighteenth-century figures.