BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S LAST BET

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. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S LAST BET tells the story of the money Franklin left behind and its adventures over a period of 200 years. Tracing the twisting battles of Franklin's fortune as it soared and plummeted, this book will reveal what the money ultimately paid for - and continues to pay for - 227 years after his death. Meyer is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award for non- fiction and a Guggenheim fellowship. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He has written numerous books about China. He teaches non-fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh.