From the author of Steve Jobs and other best-selling biographies comes an intimate story of a controversial businessman who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence.

-- Benjamin Franklin, The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders...