The Printer and the Preacher is a rare story. I don't recall having ever heard it before I read Petersen's account. But what you find here are biographies of each, and a larger narrative of their friendship (complete with letters exchanged between them). Despite their religious differences, the fiery Calvinist preacher and the deist printer shared some fundamental aspects that made their friendship mutually profitable and also of importance for the United States as a whole. Their shared origin as ambitious commoners who read voraciously and had a deep concern for the legitimacy of the common people, as well as for social morality and responsibility in general, and who never really truly fit in among the elites of England or colonial America, along with their common interests in publicity and celebrity, gave them a striking friendship that began in business and eventually got personal.
While Petersen's account is mostly chronological, Petersen makes a striking argument for the need for friendships -- such as that between Franklin and Whitefield -- to sustain the American experiment into the future.
This is a book not to be missed.
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