“Benjamin Franklin was eighty-one years old, hunched and crooked, when he signed the Constitution in 1787, with his gnarled and speckled hand. In 1731, when he was twenty-five, straight as a sapling, he’d written an essay called 'Observations on Reading History,' on a 'little paper, accidentally preserv’d.' And he’d kept reading history, and talking notes, … Continue reading The Lessons We Keep Forgetting →