Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin began writing this book as a letter to his son, and what emerged became the template for the American dream itself. He starts with his humble Boston childhood, the youngest of seventeen children, and traces the improbable arc that would make him the century's most extraordinary polymath: printer, scientist, inventor, satirist, diplomat, and founding father. But the Autobiography is not mere triumphalist biography. Franklin gives us his actual method for self-making: the famous thirteen-week rotation of virtues, his relentless schedule of morning questions, his practical philosophy of industry and temperance. The prose has a wonderful chatty intimacy, as if a brilliant uncle were staying up late telling you how he got from nowhere to everywhere. What makes this book endure is its radical practicality. This is not a saint's memoir; it's a working man's guide to becoming better, one day at a time. Every ambitious person since has been, consciously or not, following Franklin's blueprint.