From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin' s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother Jane Franklin was a passionate reader a gifted writer and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him she was a mother of twelve.<br>Benjamin Franklin who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else was the original American self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. They left very different traces behind. Making use of an amazing cache of little-studied material including documents objects and portraits only just discovered Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world-- a world usually lost to history. Lepore' s life of Jane Franklin with its strikingly original vantage on her remarkable brother is at once a wholly different account of the founding of the United States and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life unknown.
