"This is the first volume to come from a great scholarly undertaking, the assembly and editing of Benjamin Franklin's complete writings and correspondence. Sponsored jointly by the American Philosophical Society and Yale University, this new edition of forty volumes will contain everything that Franklin wrote that can be found and, for the first time, in full or abstract, all letters addressed to him, the whole arranged in chronological order. To...

Blessed with enormous talents and the energy and ambition to go with them, Franklin was a statesman, author, inventor, printer, and scientist. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and later was involved in negotiating the peace treaty with Britain that ended the Revolutionary War. He also invented bifocals, a stove that is still manufactured, a water-harmonica, and the lightning rod. Franklin's extraordinary range of interests and accomplishments...

Benjamin Franklin is one of the best known and least understood figures in the history of eighteenth-century political thought. Alan Houston clarifies our understanding of his thought by making available a representative selection of his most important political writings. The entire text of the Autobiography is included alongside letters, essays, pamphlets, and manuscript notes that cover political economy, moral psychology, and religious belief and...

Includes THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Poor Richard's Almanac, Silence Dogood's letters, Polly Baker's trial, bagatelles to his French girlfriends, the closing speech at the Constitutional Convention, letters to Jefferson and Adams and Washington, and many other writings.

"The most versatile Founding Father was a husband, a father, a writer, an inventor, a statesman, a fundraiser and a military leader. But in his mind, he was first and foremost a businessman. Franklin's captivating adventures include his almost single-handed responsibility for establishing the first media empire, the first public library, the first fire brigade, the University of Pennsylvania, the first book club and the first franchise - all of which...

Introduction: Mr. Mellon's illuminating presentation of the views of some of the founding fathers on slavery and the Negro exposes the raw nerve of American democratic society. If the central theme of the American Revolution was freedom and equality, the impact of that epochal struggle upon the black man was at best peripheral. The Declaration of Independence had dedicated the Revolution to the proposition that "all men are created equal." There were...