Poor Richard's Lament: A Most Timely Tale

What if Ben Franklin came back to life? What if everything depended on it? Poor Richard's Lament is "A re-imagining of Benjamin Franklin you will not soon forget..." says Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Steve jobs. But this is also more than a re-imagining of Franklin. It is a re-imagining of America itself. Where did the cultural legacy of Ben Franklin go wrong? We come to understand this, even as Franklin himself comes to self-realization in this book, during his contentious "celestial trial" and during his dramatic reintroduction into 21st-century America. Interwoven into the main story is a second, beginning in the red-carpeted parlors of the West Wing of the White House and ending in the blood-stained streets of West Philadelphia. Eventually, the parallel stories collide, like massive tectonic plates, in a stunning series of shocks and aftershocks. What emerges is a more profound understanding of our culture and a vision of a better America.

Following in the traditions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, with intimations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Poor Richard’s Lament, nine years in the making, is an intricately woven, ultimately uplifting tale of revelation and redemption. At the end, a better country emerges.