Wonky's Land of Nonsensical Musings
Your hands upon
A deadman’s gun and you’re
Looking down the sights
Your heart is worn,
And the seams are torn
And they’ve given you reason to fight
And you’re not gonna take what they’ve got to give
And you not gonna let them take your will to live
Because they’ve taken enough and you’ve given them all you can give
And all the storms you’ve been chasing
About to rain down tonight
And all the pain you’ve been facin’
About to comin’ to the light
The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brands
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Finally,” this is what all my goodread friends are saying. I started this book seven months ago. What took me so long. First, I don’t actually read that much. Secondly, I often found myself pausing while reading to look up some piece of information. I was led down many a wikipedia trail reading this book. Finally, the printer printed on big pages in a small font.
Ok all my excuses are finished, what about the book. I personally prefer learning about history through the lens of biography. Given that caveat, I consider The First American to be one of the best historical books I’ve ever read. We get an intimate portrait of the greatest thinker of his time if not one of the greatest thinkers in all of history. The author exposes us to a very human Franklin. We see witness his sadness at the breaking of relations with his son, who chose loyalty to the crown over loyalty to his father.
Beyond Franklin himself we encounter a treasure of information about the milieu that produced the revolution and eventually, the United States. I learned more about what lead to the revolution reading this book than I did in all the schooling I had. I highly recommend it to anybody with an interest in the period
“Go on doing great things and loving pretty women”
As you can see I am back and with a new theme. I thought a fresh start deserved a fresh theme. This means my old theme lasted a grand total of two posts. Maybe that is a record in the blogging hall of fame. I pretty much built this theme myself using bloggers html editing option. We will see how long it lasts. Note if you are viewing this blog on mobile you will not see the new theme. I pushed the blogger button that is supposed to make your new theme work for mobile, and nothing happened. So if you want to see the new theme please use a regular browser.
I plan on writing whatever I want. So be warned 🙂
Here’s a pic of the old theme for posterity:
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