Ben & Me
eBook - ePub

Ben & Me

In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Ben & Me

In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life

About this book

Part biography, part travelogue, part self-help, New York Times bestselling author Eric Weiner follows in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin, mining his life for inspiration and practical lessons for living a purposeful and virtuous life.

Ben Franklin lingers in our lives and in our imaginations. One of only two non-presidents to appear on US currency, Franklin was a founder, statesman, scientist, inventor, diplomat, publisher, humorist, and philosopher. He believed in the American experiment, but Ben Franklin’s greatest experiment was…Ben Franklin. In that spirit of betterment, Eric Weiner embarks on an ambitious quest to live the way Ben lived.

“A warm combination of homage and introspective memoir” (Kirkus Reviews), Ben & Me is a guide to living and thinking well, as Ben Franklin did. It is also about curiosity, respect for virtue, and, most of all, the elusive goal of self-improvement. As Weiner follows Franklin from Philadelphia to Paris, Boston to London, he attempts to uncover Ben’s life lessons, large and small. We learn how to improve a relationship with someone by inducing them to do a favor for you—a psychological phenomenon now known as The Ben Franklin Effect. We learn about the printing press (the internet of its day), early medicine, diplomatic intrigue, and, of course, electricity. And we learn about ethics, persuasion, humor, regret, appetite, and so much more.

At a time when history is either neglected or contested, Weiner argues we have much to learn from the past and that we’d all be better off if we acted and thought a bit more like Ben did, even if he didn’t always live up to his own high ideals. Engaging, smart, moving, and quirky, Ben & Me distills the essence of Franklin’s ideas into grounded, practical wisdom for all of us.

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Yes, you can access Ben & Me by Eric Weiner in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Historical Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Author’s Note
  6. Introduction: Alien Ben
  7. Chapter One: Resting Ben
  8. Chapter Two: Baby Ben
  9. Chapter Three: Bookish Ben
  10. Chapter Four: Empirical Ben
  11. Chapter Five: Masked Ben
  12. Chapter Six: Grounded Ben
  13. Chapter Seven: Wandering Ben
  14. Chapter Eight: Resilient Ben
  15. Chapter Nine: Homeward Ben
  16. Chapter Ten: Fluid Ben
  17. Chapter Eleven: Social Ben
  18. Chapter Twelve: Habitual Ben
  19. Chapter Thirteen: Textual Ben
  20. Chapter Fourteen: Curious Ben
  21. Chapter Fifteen: Funny Ben
  22. Chapter Sixteen: Buddha Ben
  23. Chapter Seventeen: Naked Ben
  24. Chapter Eighteen: Angry Ben
  25. Chapter Nineteen: Reflective Ben
  26. Chapter Twenty: Decisive Ben
  27. Chapter Twenty-One: Busy Ben
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two: Full Ben
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three: Floating Ben
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four: Doubting Ben
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five: Belated Ben
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six: Eternal Ben
  33. Epilogue: Beyond Ben
  34. Acknowledgments
  35. About the Author
  36. Notes
  37. Select Bibliography
  38. Index
  39. Copyright