Franklin and his sister's letters.

Yesterday, January 17, was the birthday of Benjamin Franklin in Boston, Massachusetts (1706). He was a printer, a scientist, an inventor, a writer, the founder of America's first lending library, and one of the Founding Fathers of America itself. He recalled in his Autobiography (1794) that writing well became "of great Use to me in the Course of my Life, and was a principal Means of my Advancement."

I finished a most enjoyable book about him and his sister, Jane, a few weeks ago. 

Book of Ages, The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore.

Now I see photos of my mini-iPad aren't very clear, nor do they copy and paste from the digital app.  But I like the library's summary of the digital version of the book.  I'll retype it if you have trouble reading the photo...

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and a history of history itself.  Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve.

Benjamin Franklin, who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else, was the original American Self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. They left very different traces behind. Making use of an amazing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world -- a world usually lost to history. Lepore's life of Jane Frankllin, with its strikingly original vantage on her remarkable brother, is at once a wholly different account of the founding of the United States and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life unknown.

 I not only enjoyed the information about these very different individuals the way Lepore brought them to life, I enjoyed the appendix where there was more information about the way the letters had been brought together. Unfortunately, with my library's app, Libby, there was no way to go to the end of the book to read footnotes as I went through the book. That is cumbersome, and I would probably have enjoyed the information that footnotes provide.

Another aside is that it's very likely that Ben Franklin was a nudist among his other interests. (It wasn't mentioned in this book.)

I'm now reading another Lepore book, These Truths, a history of the United States of America. It is a bit more difficult for me to get through, but perhaps because it covers so much of history in succinct chapters, and each paragraph seems to jump into a completely new subject. I do enjoy her viewpoint though.