Young Benjamin Franklin

June 15, 2018
For his first four decades, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) strived for success as a printer, publisher, and journalist.Franklin's fame as a statesman and scientist, based on his achievements in the last half of his life, far overshadows his early business career in London and Philadelphia. Bunker (An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, 2014, etc.), a former reporter for the Financial Times and an award-winning historian, creates a vibrant, perspicacious, and well-researched portrait of a man hungry for knowledge and ambitious for financial success. Unhappy as an apprentice to a candle and soap maker in Boston, the adolescent Franklin became an assistant to his brother, a printer, which at least put him in proximity to words and ideas. A printer's boy by day, he became a "scholar" at night, devouring books he borrowed from a local bookstore. In addition to Milton, Pope, and Socrates, Franklin read with delight Joseph Addison's daily publication The Spectator, rewriting items to teach himself style. Soon, the "scandalous ideas about God and the cosmos" that Franklin gleaned from his readings "opened a rift between the boy and his family," never to be healed. When Franklin "put the Christian God to the test of dialectic," God failed. No wonder Franklin escaped from Boston to more open-minded Philadelphia, where he found work with a printer. Inexperienced and somewhat credulous, he sometimes "tipped headlong into adult situations he was too naive to comprehend." In the 1720s, he decided to launch himself in London, a teeming, squalid city aptly captured by William Hogarth. Leaving Philadelphia, Franklin broke off a relationship with Deborah Read. Married and abandoned by the time Franklin returned, she became his common-law wife, raising his illegitimate son (the child of a relationship that Franklin kept secret for the rest of his life) along with their own children. Bunker adroitly describes Franklin's involvement in the religious and political controversies of the day, including slavery, as well as in the scientific projects for which he became renowned.An engaging, illuminating biography of a captivating figure.

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Starred review from August 13, 2018
Bunker, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, again provides an unusual look at American history with this accessible and riveting account of the ancestry and early life of Ben Franklin. Bunker’s diligent research and reconstruction of events from myriad sources were necessitated by Franklin’s own misleading writings; Franklin obscured and distorted his antecedents and upbringing, as when he falsely wrote that he grew up in poverty. Bunker convincingly rebuts that self-serving representation with thoroughly sourced details. Even before getting to Franklin’s childhood, Bunker traces Franklin’s family tree in fascinating fashion, starting with his great-grandfather Henry, born in England in 1573. That opening section showcases the political views and philosophies that would influence Franklin’s own: the Franklin family was affiliated with the Whigs, who advocated ideas that parallel those of the Founding Fathers, including “freedom of worship for dissenters, and taxation only with Parliament’s consent.” Bunker doesn’t glorify the family—he notes their support of slavery, a position that Franklin only renounced late in life—or gloss over Franklin’s failings, including repeated attempts to seduce other men’s wives. The result is a deep, nuanced examination of the formative influences on an iconic American figure.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
Who would have seen a future national icon in the young man who in 1732 tumbled, exhausted and hungry, from a squall-tossed boat onto a wharf at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, there to begin an anxious journey to Philadelphia? Bunker re-creates a life of restless ambition as he recounts how Benjamin Franklin finds in Philadelphia the opportunity he has been seeking for deploying the printing expertise and rhetorical skills he acquired while coming-of-age in Boston. Galvanized after a sojourn in England, there meeting the mother country's scientific and literary luminaries, Franklin returns to Penn's colony manifesting the same resolve that sustained his doughty Franklin ancestors. But even as Bunker limns the singular talents that make Franklin a man of true ingenuity, he also details the essential roles played by others who amplify his talents by giving him timely assistance. Readers see how the canny politician Alexander Hamilton lends some of his clout to a gifted printer-writer, how the inquisitive physician Cadwallader Colden entices an omnivorous mind into revolutionary research in electricity. Readers do see unsavory characteristics in this emerging titan?an occasional streak of misogyny, a long-lasting blindness to the evil of slavery. But this nuanced portrait of the young Franklin captures the fugitive genius of a quintessential American.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2018

Bunker (An Empire on the Edge) indicates that little is known about Benjamin Franklin's (1706-90) early years--the meager information in his autobiography is marginally reliable. Here, the author focuses on the family members, philosophers, preachers, writers, business and scholarly colleagues, and Franklin's own accomplishments and failures that influenced his philosophy, self-expression, and work ethic. Franklin's flight from Boston to Philadelphia was another crucial factor in his success as a shrewd businessman, committed civic leader, and professional scientist. Pennsylvania offered him freedom of thought and expression, business opportunities, and a diverse pool of talented, like-minded individuals with whom to network. By his late 30's, Franklin had achieved his coveted status as an ingenious gentleman, finally having time and resources for full-time scientific inquiry. Bunker argues that his enigmatic air was perhaps owing to his constant realization that without persistent self-improvement and self-control failure was imminent. VERDICT This thoroughly researched examination of the development of America's earliest preeminent scientist and statesman will appeal to academics and popular history readers.--Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2018

Printer, journalist, scientist, Founding Father: that's our near-mythic image of Benjamin Franklin. But what was he like when he was young? Bunker, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for An Empire on Edge: How Britain Came To Fight America, examines the young Ben, roiling with ambition, spoiling for a fight, and ready to take on the world. Insight into his family's English roots, too.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.