296 Rhetoric & Public Affairs point is well documented in the final chapter, which details the accomplishments of women in the political arena along with the evidence that backlash or not, there is still an impressive gap between the participation of women and that of men. If there is any problem with this book, it is that the authors tend to view "culture " a bit too monolithically. When they say, "culture," they are referring to the dominant culture of the United States, and not to any of the other cultures that coexist with it. There is an implicit assumption that this culture is shared by all citizens , if not all residents of the United States, an assumption that is problematic at best. While the dominant culture surely exerts enormous influence, it is not the only source of cultural meaning, especially for non-whites. Similarly, in their discussions of gender consciousness, the authors do not really explore how this can be affected by additional factors such as race and class. This detail, while important, is not enough to undermine the potential value of this book to an undergraduate classroom. The book is concise, teachable, and valuable to students of women and politics, political participation, cultural studies, and American politics. Mary E. Stuckey University of Mississippi The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin. By Douglas Anderson. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; pp. xviii + 261. $39.95. Douglas Anderson, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Georgia, has composed a book that examines Benjamin Franklin's intellectual and moral development as evidenced by his writings during the years between his first two sojourns in London (1726-1757). The head quotation emphasizes "a process of becoming, as a result of movement and change and of blending one with another" to underscore synthesis and evolution in Franklin's perspective. With clarity and precision, Anderson's book delivers more than the understated preface may suggest. There he mentions his decision to investigate "the implications of the extraordinary conjunction of influences that made Franklin's brief residence in London, from Christmas Eve 1724 through July 1726, so formative a time in his life" (xi). The preface contains sensible cautions to be considered in using such terms as "radical" and "republican" in characterizing colonial commitments (xiv). It also outlines some principles that Anderson has observed in studying Franklin's writings (xv). Anderson remarks, "The chapters that follow describe how the intellectual apprenticeship of these years revealed its outlines and its implications in the formative decades of Franklin's life" (15). Organized chronologically and thematically, a literary analysis of Franklin's prose predominates. Anderson examines the letters that Franklin wrote under the pseudonym, "Silence Dogood" (1722); his essay, Book Reviews 297 "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion" (1728); the twenty-five-year production of Poor Richard's Almanac; key pamphlets and published letters including the Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), Plain Truth (1747), Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth (1749), and Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751); and another essay, "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind" (1751). Anderson identifies intellectual resources and resonances from English-speaking sources in evidence in Franklin's prose—not only such well known figures as John Locke, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Bernard Mandeville, but also less familiar figures such as Thomas à Kempis, William Lilly, John Ray, and Sir William Petty (xv). Anderson's book demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of an array of rhetorical techniques in evidence in Franklin's prose style. He ranges over Franklin's general view of public speeches (55 and 60-63), character (12 , 29, 120, 159, and 210), reason and argument (33,40, 42, 61, and 69-70), aphorisms (91, 98, 105, and 107-109) and persona as constructed by Franklin's texts (16-24, 111-112, and 166). The conception of rhetoric in this book is more in keeping with literary approaches to stylistic analysis than rhetorical approaches that stress interaction of diverse audiences engaged actively in constructing the meanings of messages. Anderson makes little explicit analysis of actual audiences for Franklin's messages, or their expressed responses to his ideas, even though he recognizes that "the social conditions...