Reasonable Creatures

So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

From the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin which I'm in the midst of reading.  A marvelous piece of work.  This passage is from when, as a young man, Franklin, who had adopted a vegetarian diet, was persuaded to join a fish fry, first explaining to the reader his reasoning for doing so. 

Franklin's autobiography follows his life until 1757, though he died, at age 84, in 1790, and was not published until after his death.

I was inspired to read the autobiography after recently finishing Author-In-Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman, the first work on the subject.  Though Franklin never served as president, Fehrman starts with his autobiography as the first memoir of a prominent American.  Author-In-Chief does not just concern itself with memoirs, covering all books by our presidents, several of whom were also prominent authors and/or scholars.  It is also more than just a book about presidential books, weaving in the story of the development of the publishing industry and the growth of readership across time.

Though I only read Fehrman's book recently, it was a reference in either a review or interview with him that led me to read The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (see my post Not A Great Man), which he considers the best work of its kind.  I've now added several more presidential works to my reading list while finding, to my surprise, that Ronald Reagan's pre-presidential autobiography, Where's The Rest of Me?, praised by Fehrman, is now out of print.