BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S LAST BET
- Starting Time 活動開始時間
April 14, 2022 at 5:00 PM UTC
(In your time zone. 閣下所在時區）
April 14, 2022 at 1:00 PM EDT
(In the event local time zone. 活動所在時區)
- Participants 嘉賓
Michael Meyer
MICHAEL MEYER took a wide route to the story of Benjamin Franklin's remarkable afterlife, starting when Meyer was sent to China as one of its first Peace Corps volunteers. Beginning with The Last Days of Old Beijing, he authored three critically-acclaimed reported books set there, as well as numerous stories that appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Time, Smithsonian, and on This American Life. A Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting Award winner, Meyer has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, MacDowell, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy. Currently a Fulbright scholar in Taipei and a fellow at Oxford University's Centre for Life-Writing, he is working on a biography of Taiwan. Meyer is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches nonfiction writing. He lives in Squirrel Hill.
- Organizers 主協辦機構
The National Archives
- Mode 活動形式
- Hybrid
- Venue 地點
- National Archives
- Languages 語言
- English
- Description 詳情
Join us near the 232rd anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's death on April 12, 1790 to see what came of his last bet—a gift of 2,000 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.
- Registration & Video Recording 登記與錄影
Registration is required. 活動需要登記。
The event is recorded. 活動過程將會錄影。
- Website 網頁
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