{"product_id":"the-americanization-of-benjamin-franklin-9780143035282","title":"The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"I cannot remember ever reading a work of history and biography that is quite so fluent, so perfectly composed and balanced . . .\" --The New York Sun\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Exceptionally rich perspective on one of the most accomplished, complex, and unpredictable Americans of his own time or any other.\" --The Washington Post Book World\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the most respected chronicler of the early days of the Republic--and winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes--comes a landmark work that rescues Benjamin Franklin from a mythology that has blinded generations of Americans to the man he really was and makes sense of aspects of his life and career that would have otherwise remained mysterious. In place of the genial polymath, self-improver, and quintessential American, Gordon S. Wood reveals a figure much more ambiguous and complex--and much more interesting. Charting the passage of Franklin's life and reputation from relative popular indifference (his death, while the occasion for mass mourning in France, was widely ignored in America) to posthumous glory, \u003ci\u003eThe Americanization of Benjamin Franklin \u003c\/i\u003esheds invaluable light on the emergence of our country's idea of itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history at Brown University. His 1969 book \u003ci\u003eThe Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787\u003c\/i\u003e received the Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, and was nominated for the National Book Award. His 1992 book \u003ci\u003eThe Radicalism of the American Revolution\u003c\/i\u003e, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Emerson Prize. His 2009 book \u003ci\u003eEmpire of Liberty: \u003ci\u003eA History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e, won the 2010 New York Historical Society Prize in American History. Wood's other books include \u003ci\u003eRevolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Americanization of Benjamin Franklin\u003c\/i\u003e, and most recently, \u003ci\u003eThe Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States\u003c\/i\u003e, and he contributes regularly to \u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50503074414866,"sku":"9780143035282","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_130b27cf-91c8-4537-931a-45f2734e15f2.jpg?v=1730781996","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-americanization-of-benjamin-franklin-9780143035282","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}