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...knew how to keep his mouth shut, but when he spoke, he generally meant what he said and generally practiced what he preached." Among the virtues of this book is the emphasis Morgan makes on Franklin's longstanding attachment to the concept of a British-American empire, an attachment that even persisted beyond the public humiliation inflicted on him at the 1774 meeting of the Privy Council. However, the aim of exposing Franklin's personal motivations at times reveals a less complicated figure than the historical record might suggest. Morgan's Franklin seems almost as full of good intentions toward the world as Woodrow Wilson, but Franklin's diplomatic work done in Paris notably exceeds Wilson's efforts in terms of successful effort. Morgan is inclined to transfer the credit for the Peace of Paris negotiated in 1782 and 1783 to Franklin 's associates, John Jay and John Adams, but their diplomatic shortcomings without Franklin to correct them would reveal themselves in the 1790s. Jay would negotiate the Jay Treat), with the British, and Adams would reach an accord with France to avert war in as maladroit and ill-timed a manner as he possibly could. Richard B. Morris's The Peace-Makers, a 1965 study of the peace negotiations, depicts a more complicated Franklin than one would discover from Morgan. Morgan sees all of Franklin's goals in the peace negotiation as high-minded, even though he includes such goals as the voluntary cession of all British territories in North America and the official repudiation of British political and military, figures charged with conducting the war effort as parts of the British contribution to a lasting peace. Such expectations might more aptly be seen as the rhetorical ploys of a diplomat who is playing out a strong hand and determined to quash resistance at the bargaining table. I am more inclined to see the Franklin, who set his name to the peace treaty, as knowingly taking advantage of the diplomatic ineptitude of the British negotiators than imagining that he had any would entail a recognition of Franklin as deceptive and scheming -- the perception of him by such contemporaries as Thomas Penn, Josiah Tucker, William Smith, Arthur Lee, and John Adams. The reader of this review should not feel ignorant if only the last of these names appears familiar, because, in fact, the personal victims of Franklin's more complicated dimensions as a public figure were few. Morgan's intimate awareness of Franklin's own words has led him to find Franklin more straightforward than the great American spokesman actually was. The only drawback to this masterful volume is connected to its essential virtue. The close focus on Franklin causes the background figures in his life to appear only as shadowy, insubstantial beings. However, the real facts of Franklin's life were that Franklin himself knew how to operate in the shadows. In the Philadelphia of the 1730s, it would have been James Logan, one-time secretary to William Penn, and a Quaker classical scholar, merchant, and negotiator with the Indians, not young Franklin, a relative newcomer to the not very lucrative printing trade in town, who would have appeared the notable Philadelphian. Figures like Logan, Lord Shelburne or the Comte de Vergennes cannot be avoided in a description of Franklin's life, but the reader who knows Franklin as the survivor from that time does not recognize the cost and effort that led to that survival. The value of this book accompanies its principal drawback. The reader sees Franklin very clearly, though at times Morgan runs the danger of taking Franklin at his word on occasions where Franklin is engaging in the sort of tricky balancing acts. For example, Franklin, himself a non-believer in revelation, was able to be successful during a time and among a people of general Christian belief. Franklin is forthright about his unbelief in his Autobiography, and certainly many of his contemporaries surmised it. However, he is very cagey, for example, in writing to his pious parents who ask directly about what he believes. So, Franklin in the foreground emerges clear, as he does in the paintings by Martin, Duplessis, or Peale, but his surroundings lose clarity bec...