In Franklin & Washington, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson delivers a masterful, overdue joint biography of our two most legendary Founding Fathers. As Larson relates, Franklin and Washington, though divided by a 26-year age gap and vastly different life experiences, underwent a similarly dramatic transformation from loyal British colonists to American nationalists, and found a shared purpose in their efforts to prepare the United States for independence. Though the two men are acknowledged as towering figures of the Revolutionary Era, historians have tended to overlook the crucial importance of their unusual friendship. Larson makes a persuasive case that neither one could have succeeded without the other. During the Revolutionary War, Washington could not have thrived on the battlefield without the diplomacy that Franklin was conducting in France and Franklin could not have achieved his diplomatic coups without Washington’s actions on the battlefield. For these effo