Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought. By Jerry Weinberger. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. 352p. $34.95.

There are two important issues raised by Jerry Weinberger's intricate, probing, and insightful book: whether his portrayal of Franklin is accurate and whether Franklin's understanding of existence is correct. Weinberger's thesis is controversial: From age 15, when Franklin read his father's books on theology until his death at 84, he never wavered in his conviction that God did not exist, religion was superstition, and moral principles were merely longings of the human psyche, unfulfilled in this life or the next. But if he took such a skeptical view of righteousness, why did he pen his Autobiography and promote such homespun virtues as temperance, frugality, justice, chastity, and humility?