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.

A recipient of the George Washington Book Prize, Kevin J. Hayes lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio. He has published widely on American literature, history, and culture, including Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain, all also published in Reaktion Books’ Critical Lives series.