Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin; Written by Himself. [Vol. 2 Of 2]with His Most Interesting Essays, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings; Familiar, Moral, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, Selected with Care from All His Published Productions, and Comprising Whatever Is Most Entertaining and Valuable to the General Reader

Benjamin Franklin was the original American original: inventor, diplomat, scientist, and the most famous self-made man in history. This volume gathers his memoir alongside the essays and letters that made him a literary legend. Here is "The Way to Wealth," the most reprinted piece in American publishing, with its unforgettable Father Abraham dispensing aphorisms about hard work and frugality to a crowd worried about taxes. Here are Franklin's wry observations on acquiring wealth, cultivating virtue, and navigating public life. Here too are personal letters revealing the man behind the myth: ambitious, curious, occasionally vain, always witty. The autobiography traces his rise from youngest son of a Boston candle-maker to international celebrity, laying out his famous thirteen-week plan for moral perfection with the kind of earnest pragmatism that only Franklin could pull off. Two centuries later, these pages still crackle with energy. This is wisdom written by someone who actually lived his ideas, tested them in the world, and reported back honestly about what worked. For anyone who wants to understand the roots of American ambition, or simply wants to think more clearly about money, work, and virtue, there is still no better place to start.