NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NPR • Time Magazine • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Boston Globe A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians—a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister, Jane, whose obscurity and poverty were matched only by her brother’s fame and wealth but who, like him, was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Making use of an astonishing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one extraordinary woman but an entire world.

Between 1771 and 1790, American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin sat down to record the important events of his life, from his childhood in Boston to his work as a printer in Philadelphia, to his trips to Paris and his plans for the first public library. The story of the invention of the Franklin stove, the first Poor Richard's Almanac, and his experiments with electricity are all included here. His "Project for Moral Perfection"—a list of desirable virtues and steps to achieve them—influenced the modern self-help genre. Hundreds of years later, Franklin's account of his rise from middle-class obscurity to become a world-renowned scholar and civic figure continues to promote the American Dream. First published in 1791, this unabridged version of Franklin's autobiography is taken from the 1909 copyright edition.