Table of Contents

Preface: The Power of Values, by Amy Gutmann
Introduction: Benjamin Franklin and the American Imagination, by Peter Conn
PART I. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Nathan G. Goodman
PART II. CRITICAL ESSAYS
Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment, by Richard R. Beeman
Freedom of Reason, by Paul Guyer
An Inclination Joined with an Ability to Serve, by Michael Zuckerman
The Key to Electricity, by Michael Weisberg
APPENDICES
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, by Benjamin Franklin
A Chronology of Franklin's Life, compiled by Mark Frazier Lloyd
Contributors

Promotional Information

In 1771, at the age of 65, Benjamin Franklin sat down to write his autobiography, "having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity." The result is a classic of American literature.

About the Author

Peter Conn is Andrea Mitchell Term Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898-1917, Literature in America, and Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, was included among the five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle award in biography, and received the Athenaeum Award. Amy Gutmann is President of the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent books are Identity in Democracy: Why Deliberative Democracy? with Dennis Thompson, and Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, with Anthony Appiah, which won the Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association, the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award, and the Gustavus Myers Human Rights Award.