| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Life of Benjamin Franklin, vol. I: Journalist, 1706–1730. By J. A. Leo Lemay. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. xvi, 549 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8122-3854-0.) The Life of Benjamin Franklin, vol. II: Printer and Publisher, 1730–1747. By J. A. Leo Lemay. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. xvi, 647 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8122-3855-9.)
Of the making of books on Benjamin Franklin, there is, apparently, no end. Volumes dealing with topics such as Franklin's humor, sex life, friends, dietary habits, morality, politics, and legacy have become something of an industry in the years leading up to the 2006 tercentenary of his birth. The range is extraordinarily wide—so much so, in fact, that it seems contrived and artificial. A very good Franklin book indeed would be one that analyzes the ways in which publishers and municipalities have contributed to and cashed in on the current Franklin craze. (One large Pennsylvania city, for example, as part of its tercentenary hype, brands itself as "Ben-ergized.")	1
While most of the Franklin books recently churned out are coffee table items with short shelf lives, some are very good indeed. The best of all these are the first two volumes of J. A. Leo Lemay's long-anticipated biography. This colossal study, projected to run to seven volumes (although I would not be surprised if the final work clocks in at eight or nine), does for Franklin what Dumas Malone did for Thomas Jefferson. In sheer comprehensiveness, it surpasses any previous (and, one imagines, future) treatment. When completed, it promises to provide just about as complete a factual account of Franklin's life as it is possible to put together.	2
The first volume of Lemay's biography takes us through Franklin's mid-twenties. It covers the Boston into which Franklin was born, his adolescent self-education, his first ventures into print with the Silence Dogood letters, his London adventure, his return to the colonies and "respectability," and the formation of his complicated religious perspective. The second volume takes us through Franklin's forty-first year, tracing the beginnings of his public service and famed civic-mindedness, the growth of his printing trade, and his early scientific experimentation.	. . .

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