Benjamin Franklin - Softcover

This fully documented account of ' the first American' gives a detailed and lively picture of the writer who invented the lightning conductor; the politician who spent years as emissary in London trying to prevent the American War of Independence; the statesman who, when war came, served as the United States representative in Paris, intriguing for French aid and American victory. In a series of masterly chapters Ronald Clark unravels the story of the successful printer and publisher whose electrical research brought him membership of the Royal Society, whose lobbying work played a part in the repeal of the notorious Stamp Act - one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the author and printer of Poor Richard's Almanack.

Ronald Clark is the distinguished biographer of Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Sir Henry Tizard, Sir Edward Appleton and J B S Haldane. He has also written a family history of the Huxleys. His last book, Freud: The Man and the Cause, received great acclaim and was described in the Spectator as 'the best biography of Freud that we possess' and in the Guardian as 'masterly.'