Volume 32, Number 17 · November 7, 1985
Franklin's Mint
By J.H. Plumb
A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin and His Son
by Willard Sterne Randall
Little, Brown, 558 pp., $22.50
Benjamin Franklin has not attracted as many biographers as one might expect. His professional life was so complicated that would-be biographers shy away. At various times in his life he was a printer, a scientist, a journalist, a diplomat, a politician, an entrepreneur, and some would have us believe a double agent. To make matters worse, the great man shifted territory for long periods and settled chameleon-like into new worlds of fashion, culture, and politics with surprising ease. Compare, for example, John Adams's ambivalence toward London, Paris, or the Netherlands with Franklin's easy acceptance. Franklin sinks into London, or Edinburgh for that matter, as into a favorite, comfortable armchair. Adams seems ill at ease, perched on the edge of the seat, waiting to get angry. And yet their social origins and early experiences were not so very different.
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