From Deseret News archives:
Franklin fascinating in author's portrayal
A Harvard-educated Bostonian, Wood now lives in Providence, R.I., where he teaches American history at prestigious Brown University. He is prolific, but his most important academic work may be "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1991.
Now in his 70s, Wood is on the verge of becoming professor emeritus but the books will keep coming.
Of this latest work, Wood said that he read Franklin's papers in the 1970s and was struck by them. "It was not the Franklin I knew the American patriot," he said by phone from Providence. "He was critical of America, absorbed in England and parochial. Other scholars don't realize how close he came to remaining a Brit. If he had been offered a position in the British political hierarchy, America would have lost him."
"He had immense control of the world he lived in. He had hubris. As printer, editor or diplomat in France, he was very successful but he couldn't gauge popular opinion. He misunderstood the passions of the revolutionaries. He always thought the American Revolution could have been avoided."
Wood is unforgiving of Franklin for the shabby way in which he treated his wife, Deborah. "Their early letters were affectionate, but the later ones became perfunctory. He lost feeling for her as a wife. She had become his business agent in Philadelphia, while he lived in London. She was emotionally cut off.
"When she writes and asks him to come home, he doesn't respond to the letters. Franklin and Deborah spent the last 17 years of their marriage apart. He didn't need to divorce her. When he married her, he already had an illegitimate son, William, and Deborah was probably the only girl in Philadelphia who would take him."
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