Brands tries to signal a more mature, stately Franklin in the last years of the innovator’s life, but instead sounds as though Franklin is a subject worthy of beatification. “In letters, science and commitment to the common weal, Franklin was the first—in the sense of foremost—American of his generation. Considering the length and breadth of his multiple legacies, he was probably the first American of any generation.”
The biting narrative that begins with a cockfight ends with a saturation of whiny phrases of adulation at gravesite. Brands’ attempt to make Franklin into a believable, fallible man dies once America is born. Lost is Franklin the pragmatist and born is the Franklin of elementary school boredom, a man worthy of reverence because he is dead, white and a founding father.
books
The First American
By H.W. Brands
Doubleday, first published 2000
768 pp., $17