I just finished the audio book of Ben and Me, by Eric Weiner and found it as engaging and useful as Eric’s other books have been. I stumbled onto this writer by purchasing the Geography of Bliss, years ago in a used book sale. I was hooked and continued to buy and read other books by Eric Weiner and was surprised to see him doing what first appeared to be a biography of Benjamin Franklin. However, while this is indeed a biography, it goes far beyond facts about this founding father’s life. It provides a philosophical roadmap, of sorts, for living a useful life. This roadmap has already been useful to me as I was trying to buy a house at the time of reading the book, and it helped me think more broadly about the approach to take in negotiations—what would Ben do? While my house deal was minor compared to the negotiations Franklin had to manage with France or with his colleagues in the constitutional convention, the insights were useful to me since this is more than a collection of facts, however interesting, about Franklin.
Originally, Weiner’s editor suggested he do his next book on aliens and a UFO encounter, but, ironically, it was the initial research on aliens that led Weiner to the unlikely topic of Franklin, since Franklin himself entertained the idea of a “chorus of worlds.” Choosing then to explore more about Franklin, Weiner became convinced that, whom he called the “least dead” of all the founding fathers, was the more intriguing topic to write about. Weiner presents Franklin in a holistic way, never avoiding the more fraught aspects of his life, including racism, slaveholding, and, at times, the lack of support for wife and son. Asking how a man can still be considered great while holding slaves and refusing to forgive his own son for being a loyalist, Weiner navigates these murky waters instead of avoiding them. While he was never soft on Ben for his apparent failures, he helps the reader understand how we have our blind spots in the times in which we each live—not justifying or excusing it but seeking instead some perspective.
If history books can seem stodgy to some; if self-help books elicit eye-rolls from most; if personal confessional books seem like so much navel-gazing to others, then this book successfully pulls off the unlikely task of intertwining all three. Ben and Me, is a testament to life and to death and to doing each as well as possible in our short time on earth. Weiner is no sentimentalist. His impressive research is done very much old-school in the best traditions of travel, interviews, experiencing with his senses first hand to supplement the more mundane digital digging for information.
Those familiar with Weiner’s works know he always approaches subjects as part travelogue and as such takes the reader along on the journey. This is no exception, and Weiner succeeds in presenting the past as the “foreign country” that is also part of the present. In the most vivid sense he brings to mind Faulkner’s paradoxical words, “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” In a time when we most need to be buoyed-up by the best of our past as Americans, Weiner delights us with his latest book that has both inspired and delighted me, reminding me that there is hope even in dismal times.
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