The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin Franklin and Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America - Hardcover

Lyons, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1608195538 ISBN 13: 9781608195534

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press, 2013

Synopsis

A spellbinding, rich history of the American Enlightenment--think "1776" meets "The Metaphysical Club." Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries brought the Enlightenment to AmericaNan intellectual revolution that laid the foundation for the political one that followed.

About this title

Review:

Nothing was more crucial to America's founding than the Enlightenment, and no one played a more important role than Benjamin Franklin in transmitting the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment to the wider public in the form of useful knowledge. Jonathan Lyons, an engaging storyteller and insightful scholar, conveys the breathtaking sweep of this crucial story with grace and flair, and in the process he provides a compelling and innovative perspective on the American Revolution and the new nation that emerged from that upheaval. (John Ferling, author of THE ASCENT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON and INDEPENCE: THE STRUGGLE TO SET AMERICA FREE)

Lyons has two principal and intertwined stories to tell: the career of Franklin and the rise of the useful and the practical in American education and society...clear, focused snapshots of a movement and its celebrated leader. (Kirkus Reviews)

[A] highly readable account of the societies (the title one, later the American Philosophical Society, being the prototype), academies, mechanics' associations, and other social institutions the group engendered that believed science and experimentation to be collective endeavors, Lyons illuminates a formative period in American cultural history. (Booklist)

Lyons has raised important questions about the origins of "useful knowledge" in America that will have wide appeal. Recommended. (Library Journal)

You can listen to an interview with Jonathan Lyons on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show here:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2013/jun/25/bringing-enlightenment-america/

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Lyons has done a fine job in giving us a glimpse not just of Franklin the virtuoso but of the world in which he lived and worked, his contemporaries, and their enthusiasms. (Weekly Standard)

Book Description:

A spellbinding, rich history of the American Enlightenment--think 1776 meets The Metaphysical Club

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1608195538
• ISBN 13: 9781608195534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240