A classic of eighteenth-century American history and literature, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography has had an influence perhaps unequaled by any other book by an American writer. Written ostensibly as a letter to his son William, Franklin's Autobiography offers his reflections on philosophy and religion, politics, war, education, material success, and the status of women.

Prepared by the editors of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, this edition is drawn with scrupulous care from the original manuscript in Franklin's handwriting now in the Henry E. Huntington Library...

This engaging book reveals Benjamin Franklin's human side--his tastes and habits, his enthusiasms, and his devotion to democracy and the people of the United States. Three hundred years after his birth, we may remember Franklin's famous Autobiography, or his status as framer of the Declaration of Independence and the peace with Great Britain, or his experiments in electricity, or perhaps his sage advice on diligence and thrift. But historian Edmund S. Morgan invites us to meet the man himself, a sociable, good-natured, and extraordinary human being with boundless curiosity about the...

It's about our own death, or the death of someone we love. We don't want to think about it, let alone talk about it. But this courageous book is not like any discussion of death you have ever had. Ganga Stone, founder of the renowned charity "God's Love We Deliver, " offers comfort for us all and first aid for anyone in a death-related crisis. Reading "Start the Conversation" is like taking Ganga's six-week course. With her, you work on a kind of jigsaw puzzle, turning up the individual pieces of her argument and fitting them together into a coherent picture. Step by step you build your own...

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 practice, among other topics.

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 practice, among other topics.

Franklin's Autobiography is one of the most famous works in American literature. He started it as a private collection of anecdotes for his son, but soon it was transformed into a work of history, both personal and national, revealing Franklin as the man who, as Herman Melville said, possessed "deep worldly wisdom and polished Italian tact, gleaming under an air of Arcadian unaffectedness.

"Dr. Franklin's own excited, uproariously witty reports to his family, his friends, and his scientific colleagues in Europe and America create an incomparable portrait of science in the eighteenth century. Reading these letters fosters a new affection fo

In 1771, at the age of 65, Benjamin Franklin sat down to write his autobiography, "having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity." The result is a classic of American literature. On the eve of the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, the university he founded has selected the Autobiography for the Penn Reading Project. Each year, for the past fifteen years, the University of Pennsylvania has chosen a single work that the...

"Recollections of Anais Nin" presents Nin through the eyes of twenty-six people who knew her. She is the unconventional, distant aunt; the thoughtful friend; the owner of a strangely disarming voice; the author eager for attention yet hypersensitive to criticism; the generous advisor to a literary magazine; the adulteress; the beautiful septuagenarian; the recommender of books the contributors elaborate on thses and many other perceptions of Nin.
Readers of this book will meet one of the most enigmatic literary women of the twentieth century."

Benjamin Franklin-racy? When we think of Franklin, we think of a statesman, an inventor, a man of worldly wisdom-and a man temperate in all his affairs. The last thing we think of is racy. But Franklin's own words, written in a letter to his son, tell of the scrapes, the tricks, the imbroglios and the intrigues that young Ben was party to. Did you know that Ben had to post bail for himself? Or that he was afraid of contracting a venereal disease? Did you know that he jilted a girl? And engaged in bribery? These "little family anecdotes of no importance to others," as Ben called them, make for...