From his beginnings as a journalist at age sixteen to his retirement from public affairs at eighty-two, there was no break in Benjamin Franklin's activity and accomplishments. A writer, inventor, and statesman, he remains unsurpassed in the range of his natural gifts and the important uses to which he put them.

In this Pulitzer Prize–winning biography, Carl Van Doren incorporates materials from Franklin's letters, manuscripts, journals, and published works to give the most accurate and comprehensive portrait ever written of this great American.