Instead of Franklin's Boswell, Isaacson comes across as his Edward R. Among the items that were new to me: that Franklin investigated ways to make flatulence less odorous, and that Davy Crockett went down at the Alamo carrying a copy of Franklin's ''Autobiography'' in his jacket. It is a thoroughly researched, crisply written, convincingly argued chronicle that is also studded with little nuggets of fresh information.

But anyone assuming that ''Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'' is aimed at the coffee table would be dead wrong. Isaacson wrote this book while serving as managing editor at Time and then as head of CNN, both full-time jobs that presumably left little opportunity for travels back to the 18th century. Now Walter Isaacson joins the list with a full-length portrait virtually assured to bring Franklin's remarkable career before a sizable readership. Brands produced a well-received cradle-to-grave life of Franklin, then Edmund Morgan came forward with a beguilingly Boswellian character study of the great American sage. John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson appeared to be the chief beneficiaries of this trend until recently, when Benjamin Franklin moved into contention. For reasons that no one has adequately explained, those prominent Americans often mythologized and capitalized as Founding Fathers, or alternatively demonized as the deadest-whitest-males in American history, have surged into vogue over the past decade.

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