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How Benjamin Franklin and Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America
by Jonathan Lyons
Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries brought the Enlightenment to America--an intellectual revolution that laid the foundation for the political one that followed. With the "first Drudgery" of settling the American colonies now well and truly past, Franklin announced in 1743, it was high time that the colonists set about improving the lot of humankind through collaborative inquiry. From Franklin's idea emerged the American Philosophical Society, an association hosted in Philadelphia and dedicated to the harnessing of man's intellectual and creative powers for the common good. The animus behind the Society was and is a disarmingly simple one-that the value of knowledge is directly proportional to its utility. This straightforward idea has left a profound mark on American society and culture and on the very idea of America itself-and through America, on the world as a whole.
From celebrated historian of knowledge Jonathan Lyons comes The Society for Useful Knowledge, telling the story of America's coming-of-age through its historic love affair with practical invention, applied science, and self-reliance. Offering fresh, original portraits of figures like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and the inimitable, endlessly inventive Franklin, Lyons gives us vital new perspective on the American founding. He illustrates how the movement for useful knowledge is key to understanding the flow of American society and culture from colonial times to our digital present.
"Unfortunately, [Lyons's] repetitive cultural history of a shopworn subject will be of little use to anyone at all familiar with the topic. Still, like Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club, his approach is an engaging one" - Publishers Weekly
"In this highly readable account… Lyons illuminates a formative period in American cultural history, the theme being that 'the value of learning and knowledge...is directly proportional to its practical import and utility.'" - Booklist
"Lyons has raised important questions about the origins of 'useful knowledge' in America that will have wide appeal." - Library Journal
"Clear, focused snapshots of a movement and its celebrated leader." - Kirkus
This information about The Society for Useful Knowledge was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jonathan Lyons is the author of The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization. He served as editor and foreign correspondent for Reuters for more than twenty years. He holds a doctorate in sociology, and has taught at George Mason University, Georgetown University, and Monash University in Australia. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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