After reading Edmund Morgan’s biography of Franklin, rereading Walter Isaacson’s biography, and going back to Franklin’s own writings, I think Franklin is underrated as a writer, traveler, and diplomat. Most self-help books cannot do much better than Poor Richard’s Almanack. He was perhaps the most well-traveled American of his time. He understood the French much better than the better educated John Adams. In his early eighties, he added an entire floor to his house just to be a library, holding some 4,700 books. His familial relationships, however, could have used a little more work.
