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October 6, 2022 By

Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet

$21.99

EAN: N/A Categories: History, Nonfiction
  • Description

Description

Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet by Michael Meyer

The incredible story of Benjamin Franklin’s parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia—a deathbed wager that captures the Founder’s American Dream and his lessons for our current, conflicted age

Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump‑start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. 

In Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, Michael Meyer traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and silversmiths, trade schools and space races. Over time, Franklin’s wager was misused, neglected, and contested—but never wholly extinguished. With charm and inquisitive flair, Meyer shows how Franklin’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play to this day, and offers an inspiring blueprint for prosperity in our modern era of growing wealth disparity and social divisions.

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‘Books and Wine’

Next ‘Wine and Books’ will feature “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karunatilaka on September 12th at 6pm.

Author Interview with Colleen Cambridge 

Colleen Cambridge is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the American in Paris Mysteries (“Mastering the Art of French Murder”) and the Phyllida Bright Mysteries, the first of which, “Murder at Mallowan Hall”, was an Indie Next Pick and Agatha Award finalist. We’re excited to have her join us at Bay Books on August 24th at 5:00 for a FB live interview, Q & A and book signing!

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