I'm not sure what to say about this one, usually the biography type books on this list are interesting or provide some other thing for me to blog on, but this one was just outright dull and valueless for me.
The memoirs Ben Franklin wrote on his life were quite dull, partially because it seems he made a serious effort to make his life dull. He planned every part of his day, every day, in the exact same way, he'd wake up and eat breakfast, reflect on himself, work, eat lunch, work, eat dinner, reflect on himself again, and go to sleep... EVERY day.
The phrase "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy" comes to mind here, if we replace "jack" with "Ben Franklin" we have an accurate description of this whole book. It is revealed in his letters that he viewed indulgences such as... well pretty much anything else other than working or reflecting on oneself... as wasteful and as something to be avoided. This was part of his philosophy, and he followed it to a fault. The result is that he did in fact become very rich, but he had nothing in his memoirs that was even remotely interesting.
The only interesting part of the book was in one of the non-biography parts added in by the author of this book about how Ben Franklin spent his retirement years. Apparently one of the founders of our country was a 60-80 year old man seducing 18-21 year old women... I'm not sure which is sadder, the fact that one of our founding fathers was a pedophile or the fact that I'm not all that surprised...
Well that's all I can say for this book really, there wasn't anything else interesting enough to continue writing about, so rather than bore everyone to sleep I'm going to leave things off here.
As one who looks forward to making boatloads of money do you think there is anything you can learn form someone like Ben Franklin. Look beyond the bore into the helpful. Afterall, he is famous enough to have books written about him.
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