Ben Franklin

Seems a good person to model, in some ways. Bootstrapped himself quite well. Gets some good press from John Taylor Gatto.

On the other hand, there's something a big bourgeois about him. Prissy.

• here's a great critique by D H Lawrence

• David Brooks seems of two minds.

But I'm under-informed.

His Auto Biography was, among other things, a journal/NoteBook for tracking his Self Improvement along the Virtue-s he identified: see Authentic Happiness.

• inspiration for the Franklin Planner.

He wrote lots of good questions and requirements for the Junto Meeting.

Review of Jerry Weinberger's bio/analysis. TO SOME, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN is known as a skillful diplomat and intrepid scientist, one of America's most important and influential Founders. Yet Franklin is also known as something of a didactic boor, droning on about self-denial, discipline, and "virtue." D.H. Lawrence saw in him the personification of Friedrich Nietzsche's last man, while Max Weber saw in Franklin the archetype of the Protestant ethic at work in America--bland, bourgeois, and eminently prosaic. There is something--a little something--to these claims, according to Jerry Weinberger, who teaches political science at Michigan State. Yet Weinberger's Benjamin Franklin Unmasked offers a revolutionary reevaluation of Franklin's thought, one that unveils Franklin as a far more subtle, complex, and subversive thinker than most have cared to notice.

David Waldstreicher thinks recent biographies are too uncritical.