The author provides a detailed account of Benjamin Franklin's personal life, mostly drawn from surviving correspondence between Franklin and his friends and family. The results mostly dispel the common misperceptions of Franklin as strait-laced moralizing author (ala Poor Richard) or lascivious but successful rebellion spokesman in Paris. What emerges in this biography is the complex private person behind the public figure--an immensely paternalistic man, less perfect that his admirers would have it, and more emotional than his detractors have allowed.