| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Philip Dray. Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America. New York: Random House. 2005. Pp. xviii, 279. $25.95.

Philip Dray's elegant little book accepts historian I. Bernard Cohen's contention that Benjamin Franklin was first and foremost a scientist. If Franklin had a "core," it was reflected in his unflagging desire to comprehend the orderly laws that governed the physical world. According to Dray, Franklin was not just a practical tinkerer who sought to improve the lives of ordinary people by inventing bifocals, a more efficient stove, a glass armonica, or a lightning rod. Franklin was a first-class theoretician, who was committed to the scientific method as delineated in Isaac Newton's Opticks (1704) and who understood—and proved—the relationship between lightning and electricity. Employing a style that even the most unscientific lay person can understand, Dray explains the profound significance of Franklin's scientific endeavors.

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