Download or read book The Library of Benjamin Franklin written by Edwin Wolf and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1012 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in the 1950s, Edwin Wolf 2nd embarked on a biblio'l. quest to reconstruct the library of Benjamin Franklin, which was the largest & best private library in Amer. at the time of his death & was subsequently dispersed. The contents of Franklin's library were virtually unknown until Wolf identified the unique shelfmarks that Franklin used to organize his books. That discovery allowed Wolf to locate 2,700 titles in 1,000 vols. that Franklin actually owned. Wolf also identified a further 700 titles owned by Franklin. After wolf's death, Kevin Hayes took up the project & brought it to fruition. This catalogue includes almost 4,000 books known to have been owned by Franklin, & the Intro. tells the complete story of Franklin's library, its dispersal, & its reconstruction.

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin and Eighteenth century American Libraries written by Margaret Barton Korty and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1965 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Devious Dr Franklin Colonial Agent written by David T. Morgan and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin in London written by George Goodwin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of Franklin's British years.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin written by Carla Mulford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive and accessible, this Companion addresses several well-known themes in the study of Franklin and his writings, while also showing Franklin in conversation with his British and European counterparts in science, philosophy, and social theory. Specially commissioned chapters, written by scholars well-known in their respective fields, examine Franklin's writings and his life with a new sophistication, placing Franklin in his cultural milieu while revealing the complexities of his intellectual, literary, social, and political views. Individual chapters take up several traditional topics, such as Franklin and the American dream, Franklin and capitalism, and Franklin's views of American national character. Other chapters delve into Franklin's library and his philosophical views on morality, religion, science, and the Enlightenment and explore his continuing influence in American culture. This Companion will be essential reading for students and scholars of American literature, history and culture.

Download or read book Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin written by Rae Katherine Eighmey and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable work, Rae Katherine Eighmey presents Franklin's delight and experimentation with food throughout his life. At age sixteen, he began dabbling in vegetarianism. In his early twenties, citing the health benefits of water over alcohol, he convinced his printing-press colleagues to abandon their traditional breakfast of beer and bread for "water gruel," a kind of tasty porridge he enjoyed. Franklin is known for his scientific discoveries, including electricity and the lightning rod, and his curiosity and logical mind extended to the kitchen. He even conducted an electrical experiment to try to cook a turkey and installed a state-of-the-art oven for his beloved wife Deborah. Later in life, on his diplomatic missions--he lived fifteen years in England and nine in France--Franklin ate like a local. Eighmey discovers the meals served at his London home-away-from-home and analyzes his account books from Passy, France, for insights to his farm-to-fork diet there. Yet he also longed for American foods; Deborah, sent over favorites including cranberries, which amazed his London kitchen staff. He saw food as key to understanding the developing culture of the United States, penning essays presenting maize as the defining grain of America. Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin conveys all of Franklin's culinary adventures, demonstrating that Franklin's love of food shaped not only his life but also the character of the young nation he helped build.

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin written by Kevin J. Hayes and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An action-packed retelling of the life and work of the polymath and so-called First American, Benjamin Franklin. All Benjamin Franklin biographers face a major challenge: they must compete with their subject. In one of the greatest autobiographies in world literature, Franklin has already told his own story, and subsequent biographers have often taken Franklin at his word. In this exciting new account, Kevin J. Hayes takes a different approach. Hayes begins when Franklin is eighteen and stranded in London, describing how the collection of curiosities he viewed there fundamentally shaped Franklin’s intellectual and personal outlook. Subsequent chapters take in Franklin’s career as a printer, his scientific activities, his role as a colonial agent, his participation in the American Revolution, his service as a diplomat, and his participation in the Constitutional Convention. Containing much new information about Franklin’s life and achievements, Hayes’s critical biography situates Franklin within his literary and cultural milieu.

Download or read book The Reckoning written by Jacob Soll and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant” (Los Angeles Review of Books) history of accounting, showing how financial and political accountability has shaped the rise and fall of nations and empires Whether building a road or fighting a war, leaders from ancient Mesopotamia to the present have relied on financial accounting to track their state's assets and guide its policies. Basic accounting tools such as auditing and double-entry bookkeeping form the basis of modern capitalism and the nation-state. Yet our appreciation for accounting and its formative role throughout history remains minimal at best-and we remain ignorant at our peril. Poor or risky practices can shake, and even bring down, entire societies. In The Reckoning, historian and MacArthur "Genius" Award-winner Jacob Soll presents a sweeping history of accounting, drawing on a wealth of examples from over a millennia of human history to reveal how accounting has shaped kingdoms, empires, and entire civilizations. The Medici family of 15th century Florence used the double-entry method to win the loyalty of their clients, but eventually began to misrepresent their accounts, ultimately contributing to the economic decline of the Florentine state itself. In the 17th and 18th centuries, European rulers shunned honest accounting, understanding that accurate bookkeeping would constrain their spending and throw their legitimacy into question. And in fact, when King Louis XVI's director of finances published the crown's accounts in 1781, his revelations provoked a public outcry that helped to fuel the French Revolution. When transparent accounting finally took hold in the 19th Century, the practice helped England establish a global empire. But both inept and willfully misused accounting persist, as the catastrophic Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 have made all too clear. A masterwork of economic and political history, and a radically new perspective on the recent past, The Reckoning compels us to see how accounting is an essential instrument of great institutions and nations-and one that, in our increasingly transparent and interconnected world, has never been more vital.

Download or read book A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders written by James Delbourgo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The first book to situate early American experimental science in the context of a transatlantic public sphere, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders offers a view of the origins of American science and the cultural meaning of the American Enlightenment."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book A Rope of Sand written by Michael Kammen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the twenty years before the American Revolution, thirty-seven men acted as paid agent or lobbyists for the American colonies in England. The most famous among them were Benjamin Franklin, who represented four different colonies and served for seventeen years as agenet for Pennsylvania, and Edmund Burke, who accepted the position to further his own career. Yet the other thirty-five were also a colorful and heterogenous group. This detailed study, by a Pulitzer-prize-winning historian, of their activities and of the gradual breakdown of communications between the colonies and the mother country, until the link between the two become only "a rope of sand," is, in the words of the Richmond News Leader, "a new and invigorating approach to the American fight for independence." "Soundly documented, well organized and highly readable." - The New York Historical Society Quarterly "A challenging book about an important historical institution." - The Historian "A substantial contribution to our understanding of Anglo-American history during the eighteenth century." - The New England Quarterly "Both in concept and execution, A Rope of Sand is impressive." - The Journal of American History

Download or read book William Franklin written by Sheila L. Skemp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-08-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Benjamin Franklin flew his kite in a thunderstorm in his famous experiment, his illegitimate son William was his only companion. Together they traveled through the western wilds of Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War, fought in the colony's fractious political battles. Ben helped his son attain the post of Royal Governor of New Jersey, and William's government hired Ben to represent the colony in London. But when war came, father and son were split: one acclaimed as a patriot hero, the other a loyalist condemned by his countrymen. In William Franklin, Sheila Skemp tells the story of this fascinating and complex man, a man with a foot in both worlds--he loved both King and country, and saw the interests of both as inextricably intertwined. She follows William's early years as a militia officer in the wars with the French, his life as a law student in England, and his long tenure as Royal Governor of New Jersey. Skemp highlights the close personal and political relationship between father and son, depicting such ironic episodes as William's defense of his father against charges that Ben was the author of the infamous Stamp Act. But as the years passed, Ben, in London, grew increasingly bitter toward the Crown, while William, in America, remained devoted to the King. By the time war came, their loyalties were divided, their relationship destroyed. Skemp traces William's career through the tumult of revolution and exile. Refusing to follow his fellow royal governors into asylum, he was arrested by the patriots and jailed; his wife soon died, and his property was confiscated. Upon release, William became president of the Board of Associated Loyalists in New York, where--neglected by the British and despised by the revolutionaries--he authorized one of the most notorious atrocities of the war, the hanging of Joshua Huddy. At war's end, Franklin fled into exile in England, hated by his countrymen, and disowned by the father he still venerated, and even loved. Sweeping and authoritative, William Franklin captures some of the great issues and personalities of the Revolutionary era, and the bitterness of a family split between father and son, patriot and loyalist.

Download or read book Guide to Microfilm Edition of Benjamin Franklin s Account Books written by Benjamin Franklin and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin and His Circle written by Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portraits of Franklin himself and of his associates, his belongings, and the pictured views of the scenes of his varied career. -- Preface.

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin 1907 1983 written by Melvin H. Buxbaum and published by Hall Reference Books. This book was released on 1983 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Transactions of the American Philosophical Society written by and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 1046 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge.

Download or read book The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America written by Bibliographical Society of America and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ebenezer Kinnersley Franklin s Friend written by Joseph A. Leo Lemay and published by University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection. This book was released on 1964 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ebenezer Kinnersley was born on 30 November 1711, in Gloucester, England. Before he was three years old, his family moved to America and settled near Lower Dublin, Pennsylvania. Largely home-educated by his father, William Kinnersley, a Baptist minister, he first became widely known when, at the height of the Great Awakening in 1740, he delivered at the Philadelphia Baptist Church an address attacking the emotional excesses of the popular revivalistic ministers. Kinnersley is perhaps best known today, however, as Benjamin Franklin's collaborator in the experiments in electricity. Franklin wrote in his Autobiography that he suggested Kinnersley give lectures on the subject and that he drew up a syllabus for that purpose. Although Kinnersley was not the first to give popular lectures on electricity, nor the only one who did so during the twenty-five years he was most active, no other lecturer was as popular, successful, or original as he. He was, indeed, the greatest of the popular lecturers in colonial America--the forerunners of the nineteenth-century lyceum movement--and was the only person in the colonies, beside Franklin, who made significant contributions to the science of electricity. In addition to his contributions to early American religious and scientific thought, Kinnersley was the first Professor of English and Oratory at the University of Pennsylvania (then the Philadelphia College). As such he may have been the first person to hold the title Professor of English. This biography should be of importance to students of colonial culture, to Franklin students, and to those interested in the history of science or education in colonial America, as well as in the history of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania.