A printer, author, library organizer, inventor, diplomat, scientist, philanthropist, and statesman, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1703, the fifteenth child of Abiah and Josiah Franklin. At that time, more than half of the booksellers in the New World were within a quarter of a mile of his birthplace. It is little wonder, then, that Franklin learned to read early in life ("I do not remember when I could not read"). He spent many hours poring over the works of authors such as John Bunyan and Cotton Mather, works he found in the small libraries of his father and his friend Matthew Adams. The life-story record Franklin left of his eclectic reading interests demonstrates that it was always socioculturally mediated, no matter what his stage of life or his location. From these works it appears that he developed the sense of duty, self-improvement...