Edmund S. Morgan, is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, is the author of Benjamin Franklin (ISBN 0 300 09532 5, [pound]19.95*), published by Yale University Press.
“People who have read one or more of the many current books about
Benjamin Franklin really ought to direct their attention to the man
himself, specifically to The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. .
. . It is the first great American book. . . . An extraordinary
document. . . . Plainly yet vividly written, its 18th-century prose
still accessible to ordinary readers more than two centuries later.
. . . It portrays Colonial and Revolutionary America . . . with an
immediacy unmatched in almost any other document. . . . Franklin’s
wisdom is for the ages, our own as much as his. So read the
Autobiography and—among the many editions available—read Yale’s.
Its text is the most reliable (the Franklin papers are at Yale) and
its supplementary material is uniformly useful.”—Jonathan Yardley,
Washington Post
“The best and most beautiful edition [of the Autobiography].”—J. H.
Plumb, New York Review of Books
“Where so many fancy books are long on pictures and short on
readable reading matter, this one is superbly the reverse. . . .
What counts here is the text: the first thoroughly edited and
adequately annotated version of Franklin’s memoirs faithful in
every word to Franklin’s holograph. . . . The result is like
cleaning away the grime and crackled varnish of generations to
discover unsuspected sparkle in an old master.”—Time
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