I just finished The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and was unimpressed by the structure and layout of the book. To get one thing straight, his life was extremely impressive and he still remains one of the most popular American figures to this day. He represents the pinnacle of the American man.

It is the language and narrative of the autobiography that has me disappointed. The obvious issue with reading 18th century English is that context for words have evolved and made the text difficult to read. This is something you can’t change but much of the nuances in literature makes it much more difficult to understand. Secondly, the narrative jumps around between stories in his life (I.e him jumping to his electricity experiments in book 3, while the preceding narrative was about the militia). The narratives themselves were quite ordinary.

Reading a bit deeper into this, maybe it was a great man’s way to be humble during his life. Him establishing the fire department, libraries and UPenn were just obvious things to do that he doesn’t take much credit for it. He spends an inordinate amount of time talking about politics in the colonies and maybe he believes those are his biggest accomplishments. This is completely speculative and I’d like to believe that.

Regardless of how I personally felt about the book, I think it was a unique insight at an influential person’s life and choices.