BEN & ME

Benjamin Franklin for the 21st century.

About to turn 60, Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss and The Socrates Express, found himself drawn to Franklin, the most accessible and relatable among the nation’s Founders. Franklin, as the author sees him, is “fleshly and fluid,” with “much to teach us about something as enticing as it is elusive: the secret to living a long and useful life.” As Weiner follows Franklin’s footsteps in Boston, Philadelphia, London, France, and Canada, he considers the trajectory of his own life in the context of Franklin’s. Some similarities strike him: Both, he reveals, were “bitten by the travel bug at a young age,” leaving the cities of their births—Franklin’s Boston and Weiner’s Baltimore—to search for a more congenial setting. Franklin’s immediate affinity for Philadelphia recalls Weiner’s own feeling that in India, where he was sent as a foreign correspondent for NPR, he had found his “soulplace.” Both men “wrestled with order” and extolled the power of habits. “Like me,” Weiner writes, Franklin “was prone to distraction and absent-mindedness. Like me, he loved a good planner. Like me, he possessed a strong and persistent drive to improve.” He was not without faults: He struggled with anger issues and, most distressingly for Weiner, failed his family. He did not rush from London to his dying wife’s side, and he refused to reconcile with his son, who had been a staunch monarchist. He owned slaves, only belatedly coming to the cause of abolition. Nevertheless, Franklin still inspires, with a lifelong “sense of wonder,” respect for virtue, and lively curiosity. “At a time when everyone, including me, is struggling to create better versions of themselves,” Weiner writes, “Franklin, America’s original self-help evangelist, reminds us it is easier than we think.”

A warm combination of homage and introspective memoir.