Autobiography

Franklin turned his own life into the first American success story and then wrote it down, inventing an archetype the country has never stopped retelling: the self-made citizen who improves himself in order to be useful to others. The book is shrewd, funny, and quietly radical, because it insists that a printer's apprentice can become the equal of any lord by industry and attention. The democratic self, at its most practical.

The printer, scientist, diplomat, and oldest of the founders, who turned his own life into the first American success story and then wrote it down. The Autobiography invented an enduring archetype: the self-made citizen who improves himself in order to be useful to others. He was the only person to sign the Declaration, the treaty with France, the peace with Britain, and the Constitution. The republic had no more versatile servant.