William L. Andrews

A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), perhaps the first American bestseller, recounts this thirty-nine-year-old woman's harrowing months as the captive of Narragansett Indians. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771 - 1789), the most famous of all American autobiographies, gives a lively portrait of a chandler's son who became a scientist, inventor, educator, diplomat, humorist - and a Founding Father...