The Real Benjamin Franklin
15 myths, legends, and misconceptions that shaped the image of a Founding Father
15 chapters · 75 pages · EPUB & PDF
Only available from Thornton & Ortega.
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Americans grow up with a few Benjamin Franklin scenes: the kite struck by lightning, the first streetlamps, the clocks pushed forward each spring. Each began with something real, and each grew in the retelling.
This book traces each story to its oldest source, from Franklin’s letters and newspaper to his Autobiography and his will. You come away knowing what actually happened, and the true versions turn out to be better stories than the legends.
Franklin turned down the credit for lighting Philadelphia’s streets; his Autobiography gives it to a private citizen named John Clifton, who placed a lamp at his own door. The 1784 letter blamed for daylight saving time never touches the clocks. It proposes, with a straight face, waking Paris at sunrise with church bells and, if those fail, cannon fired in every street. And where a legend holds up, the book says so: on November 21, 1783, Franklin watched the first free human flight rise from a garden near his house and signed the report certifying it.
The next time the kite or the apple a day comes up at dinner, you’ll know where the story started and what the record says instead.
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