This book has been written primarily from original sources, published and unpublished, and in particular from the surviving letters that passed between Franklin and his family and friends only a fraction, alas, of the total written and including a good many not likely to be printed anywhere else ( for even the monumental edition of the Franklin Papers at Yale has to be limited to letters by or to Franklin in person ). It is not intended as a general biography of Franklin: Claude-Anne Lopez and Eugenia W. Herbert have filled in the background of his life only to the extent that it seemed...