Join Harvard professor, Dr. Joyce Chaplin for the story of her new book, The Franklin Stove: An Unintended Revolution.

A Washington Post Noteworthy Book
One of The New Yorker's Best Books of the Year So Far

“[A] richly textured history . . . This story holds numerous lessons for our era.” —The New Yorker

“From Joyce Chaplin’s engaging, wide-ranging pages a fresh Franklin emerges.” —Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Revolutionary

“A fascinating, innovative, inventive look at a fascinating, innovative man and his inventions.” —Charles C. Mann, bestselling author of The Wizard and the Prophet and 1491 

The biggest revolution in Benjamin Franklin’s lifetime was made to fit in a fireplace. Assembled from iron plates like a piece of flatpack furniture, the Franklin stove became one of the era’s most iconic consumer products, spreading from Pennsylvania to England, Italy, and beyond. It was more than just a material object, however—it was also a hypothesis.