Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: A Norton Critical Edition

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

A Norton Critical Edition

1791 • 441 pages

Ratings36

Average rating4

15

Admittedly, I grabbed this book because I needed 1 more nonfiction to complete my New Year's Resolution and this one was short. It's also the first in the Harvard 5 foot shelf that I downloaded when it went on sale this year and I enjoyed making the tiniest dent in that. That said, I was fascinated by a lot of Franklin's proposals. He wrote this in 1781, folks, and in it he condemns anti-vaxxers, promotes taxation for infrastructure, writes about founding a public religious space where anyone (he cites the Mufti of Constantinople preaching Mohammadanism) could speak, and even suggests a rudimentary public health care system where anyone, regardless of what lands they are from, could be helped. I guess the only part our current politicians have read are the racist asides about drunken Indians...

December 30, 2019Report this review