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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson 590 pages, Simon & Schuster, $30

After completing his first draft of the Declaration of Independence on June 21, 1776, Thomas Jefferson sent the document down the street to let Benjamin Franklin have a look. What happened next is described by Walter Isaacson in his new book, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

"Franklin made only a few changes.... The most important of his edits was small but resounding. He crossed out, using the heavy backslashes that he often employed, the last three words of Jefferson's phrase 'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable' and changed them to the words now enshrined in history: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident.'"

That single edit, Isaacson notes, turned the historic assertion of man's inalienable rights from a vaguely religious one into one of firm rationality. It changed the whole tenor of the document.

But then Isaacson goes on to explain where Franklin got the idea in the first place.

He borrowed the notion of self-evident truths from his great friend David Hume, the Scottish philosopher whose theory, known as "Hume's fork," distinguished between "synthetic truths" that describe matters of fact (such as "London is bigger than Philadelphia') and "analytic truths" that are self-evident by virtue of reason (such as "All bachelors are unmarried" or The angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees. "Or "All men are created equal").

Through such asides, made possible only by copious research of his subject, Isaacson brings forth one of the clearer and more accurate, as well as perhaps the most entertaining, biography of Franklin since the founding father's own autobiography some 200 years ago.

Just as we are pleased at Franklin's incisive editing of Jefferson's Declaration, so are we also grateful that some of his ideas never saw the light of day (the wild turkey instead of the bald eagle as the national emblem, for example, or Franklin's proposals at the Constitutional Convention for a unicameral legislature, an executive council instead of a president, and no salaries for officeholders-all politely ignored by the other delegates). Franklin would not have minded that his ideas were overridden, for as Isaacson makes clear, he was perhaps the most dedicated to democracy and to compromise of all the founding fathers, and the foremost to espouse the dignity of the working tradesman and entrepreneur.

A genius and polymath, Franklin worked in many fields: politics, business, diplomacy, statecraft, science, and publishing, among others. His greatest gift may have been an immense curiosity and a creative imagination, which he focused on matters both large and small. (Some accused him of being trifling.) One example: as a member of the Pennsylvania militia, which he had helped to create, Franklin suggested that large, vicious dogs be used as scouts. But they would have to wear muzzles, he added (as if thinking out loud), so they would not give away the militia's presence, should they go barking after squirrels.

Franklin genuinely believed that pointing out the way to moral goodness can be useful, but he also knew his own weaknesses were as great as anyone else's. Once, overcome by his own pride--a feeling he admits he had to fight off all his life--Franklin had his militia regiment parade up Philadelphia's main street and fire their cannons. The report of the guns. He later noted for posterity. broke some of the Leyden jars of the electrical apparatus in his house. What it did to the neighbors' china was never reported. But Franklin soon resigned his commission.

Another revelation from Isaacson's book is that Franklin was far more crafty and mischievous (in a good-natured way) than he is commonly given credit for. He could not resist using his enormous wit to castigate his enemies, as well as to chide himself.

A case in point is his Poor Richard' s Almanack, which Isaacson notes is known more today for its folksy proverbs meant for "conveying instruction among the common folk" than for the hilarious inside Jokes Franklin perpetrated in its pages. The fictional publisher of the almanac, Richard Saunders (and his nagging wife, Bridget), was borrowed from a real Richard Saunders who had been a noted almanac writer in England in the previous century.

While he played up his intentions of instructing and improving his readers through the Almanack, Franklin openly conveyed through Richard the real motivation behind the publication, which was to make money. Almanacs were cash cows for printers in Franklin's day, and he only started up Poor Richard in 1733 when the writers of the two almanacs he was already printing had taken their work elsewhere.

In Poor Richard, Isaacson writes, Franklin "ginned up a running feud with his rival [almanac publisher] Titan Leeds by predicting and later fabricating his death," It was a prank Franklin borrowed from the Irish writer Jonathan Swift, and it worked. Leeds took the bait and responded in his next almanac (after the date of his predicted death) by calling Franklin a "conceited scribbler" and "a fool and a liar." Franklin countered that Leeds must indeed be dead and his new almanac being printed by someone else, since Leeds "was too well bred to use any man so indecently and scurrilously, and moreover his esteem and affection for me was extraordinary."

The next year Franklin continued the ridicule of the "deceased" publisher. "'Tis plain to everyone that reads his last two almanacks," he wrote, "no man living would or could write such stuff." When Leeds actually did die in 1738, Isaacson reports. Franklin continued the prank by printing a letter from Leeds' ghost, admitting that he had really died at the time Franklin had predicted and making his own prediction that another of Franklin's almanac rivals, John Jerman, would convert to Catholicism, thus engendering a new feud for his Poor Richard audience to savor.

Franklin would never know the far reaching effect his Almanack and his autobiography would have upon the world, their impact perhaps rivaling that of his famous inventions. His ethic lauding personal responsibility became the motivation for many a subsequent self-made man. Issacson notes that Franklin's Autobiography "was the one book that Davy Crockett carried with him to his death at the Alamo" and that industrialist Thomas Mellon regarded reading Franklin's Autobiography as "the turning point" of his life.

Meanwhile, Poor Richard's maxims and aphorisms, although they may have inspired millions, also offered ample fodder for good-natured ribbing from humorists down through the years. In an especially delightful Jibe, Mark Twain charged Franklin's maxims with having ruined the lives of generations of "otherwise happy boys,"

And Franklin no doubt would have loved Twain's Joke. After all, he was the one who cracked the famous pun at the most serious moment in American history.

After penning his signature on the Declaration of Independence at the formal signing of August 2, 1776, John Hancock stated: "There must be no pulling different ways. We must all hang together."

"Yes," Franklin chimed in. "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

In the beginning of his book, Walter Isaacson states, "The most interesting thing Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself," This book, perhaps more so than others, clearly demonstrates how profoundly that "most interesting" invention has affected all of our lives.

Put the Moose on the Table: Lessons in Leadership From a CEO's Journey Through Business and Life by Randall Tobias, 280 pages, Indiana University Press, $24.95

What does it take to be an outstanding manager and communicator? Randall L. Tobias ought to know. At age 39 he became the youngest senior officer in the history of the world's largest corporation, AT&T. In 1993, Tobias accepted the post of President and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company, a foremost American pharmaceutical maker. His hiring came on the heels of a traumatic event for the company, the ousting by the board of directors of the popular former CEO Vaughn Bryson.

When Tobias left his job as Vice Chairman of AT&T and arrived for work at Lilly, he half expected to be met by "an angry mob." But what he encountered was actually worse. Another calamity had befallen the company the day after he accepted the job. For the first time in history, a Lilly drug trial had been stopped. A promising new drug had turned deadly. Everyone was waiting and watching to see how this new CEO from the world of telephones would handle an unprecedented corporate emergency. The following is Tobias' account of his first day on the job excerpted from his book, Put the Moose on the Table.

Almost immediately upon my arrival in the executive suite, I was informed that "the meeting" was about to get under way.