An excellent review of Gordon Wood’s The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin:
It’s Benjamin Franklin’s time. Two years ago Edmund S. Morgan gave us a fine character sketch with ”Benjamin Franklin.” Then Walter Isaacson’s ”Benjamin Franklin: An American Life” planted itself on the New York Times best-seller list for a long stay. H. W. Brands has chimed in with ”The First American,” a more commodious biography than Isaacson’s, if a less fluent one. And now we have Gordon S. Wood’s engaging book ”The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.”
Wood has some tough acts to follow, but he is no slouch. A skilled writer with both Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes to his credit, he possesses as profound a grasp of the early days of the Republic as anyone currently working. He is the author of two books — ”The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787” and ”The Radicalism of the American Revolution” — that are essential for understanding the United States from its founding down to the present.
This study is not a biography, at least not a conventional one. Wood focuses on Franklin’s personal development and constructs his narrative around various turning points in the life, almost like a bildungsroman. We learn the choices Franklin made, the conflicts he had to resolve. This is the most dramatic of the recent Franklin books.
Continue reading the review from The New York Times.