Benjamin Franklin is one of those historical figures that we tend to know more as a collection of anecdotes or impressions: flying a kite in a thunderstorm, his Poor Richard's Almanac sayings, or as the somewhat dirty old man from the play 1776. That was certainly the extent of my knowledge of Franklin, but in a year in which I had trips scheduled to Boston and Philadelphia, seeing a new biography of Franklin meant it was time to expand.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson, is another in a surge of popular and best-selling biographies of the Founding Fathers. Isaacson, who had been CEO of CNN and a managing editor of Time Magazine , in some ways had an easy job. Given Franklin's accomplishments and personality, it would be easy to come up with a fascinating book. On the other hand, it was probably a struggle to keep the book reasonable in size. (The book comes to 490 pages, plus another hundred for notes, bibliography and other reference materials.)

The book is a straightforward chronological biography. However it still manages to focus on the varied aspects of Franklin's life:

Franklin the Businessman

Franklin was born to a tallower (candlemaker), but since he was the seventeenth kid in the family, there was no room in the family business. He apprenticed with an older brother who was a printer, which became Franklin's profession, too, although he ran away during his apprenticeship to Philadelphia. Starting as an assistant to other printers, he eventually built up a thriving print shop that allowed him to retire from active work as a printer while still in his 40s. His success as a printer was helped by his success as a writer, too. As a "content producer" he made sure there was always demand for what he was printing. He was proud of being a tradesman, a member of the middle class (what he termed the "leather apron" group in society) and not a member of the landed aristocracy

There were few people in American either as poor or as rich as those in Europe, he said. "It is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails." Instead of rich proprietors and struggling tenants, "most people cultivate their own lands" or follow some craft or trade. Franklin was particularly harsh on those who sought hereditary privilege or who had "no other quality to recommend him but his birth." In America, he said, "people do not enquire of a stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?" Reflecting his own pride in discovering that he had hardworking forebears rather than aristocratic ones, he said that a true American "would think himself more obliged to a genealogist who could prove for him that his ancestors and relations for ten generations had been ploughmen, smiths, carpenters, turners, weavers, tanners or even shoemakers, and consequently that they were useful members of society, than if he could only prove that they were Gentlemen, doing nothing of value but living idly on the labor of others."

To illustrate, Franklin tried to discourage his son from going into government work (pursuing the appointment as Royal Governor of New Jersey.) It would be far better for him to learn a trade, so that he could always go out and make his own living, rather than relying on favor from the government.