True to His Home

The life of Benjamin Franklin told for young readers as a chain of habits — the reading, the printing, the almanac, the fire company, the lightning and the treaty. Butterworth keeps close to the autobiography and to Franklin's own maxims, which do most of the teaching. The book is old-fashioned in its confidence that character can be built on purpose, which is exactly Franklin's own claim. Thirty-nine plates by painters including Fitz Henry Lane and Thomas Moran trace the harbors, ships and weather of Franklin's Boston and Philadelphia, matching the book's steady course through a life at sea and in port.