From AudioFile
In the face of recent revisionist efforts to demean Franklin, it's well to return to the most renowned of the Franklin biographies and winner of the 1938 Pulitzer Prize. There's nothing extraordinary about the narration. Reader Patrick Cullen proceeds with clear enunciation at a steady pace, injects slight emotion in the few places where appropriate and generally delivers as straightforward a reading as one can expect. One never expects histrionics in a text such as this, and one is not disappointed here. The text itself is enriching and the presentation perfectly adequate. D.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

LA Times
"The acting is superb."

Dick Richmond, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 19, 1997
"This well-known work by one of our nation's founding fathers was certainly given to the right individual to narrate. Fredd Wayne, whose one-man show, "Benjamin Franklin, Citizen," has also been recorded by Audio Editions, seems to have captured Franklin's persona."

Book Description
Discover Benjamin Franklin-scientist, inventor, writer, and politician-through the words of the elder statesman himself and the perceptions of his friends and family.

With writings from Franklin's wife and son-as well as his own essays and letters-this remarkable book paints an intimate, revealing portrait of a truly extraordinary man.

ANNOTATION

Publisher, inventor, educator, and statesman, Benjamin Franklin was a complex and appealing character. Here is a wide-ranging selection of his writings from Poor Richard's Almanac, scientific essays, and political commentaries, plus a generous dose of his famous humor.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. Franklin's achievements range from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanack to signing the Declaration of Independence. In his own lifetime he knew prominence not only in America but in Britain and France as well. This volume includes Franklin's reflections on such diverse questions as philosophy and religion, social status, electricity, American national characteristics, war, and the status of women. Nearly sixty years separate the earliest writings from the latest, an interval during which Franklin was continually balancing between the puritan values of his upbringing and the modern American world to which his career served as prologue. This edition provides a new text of the Autobiography, established with close reference to Franklin's original manuscript. It also includes a new transcription of the 1726 journal, and several pieces which have recently been identified as Franklin's own work.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile - Don Wismer