“History is written by the victors”; a common phrase that doesn’t take into account who writes that history. Historians are the ones who get to put pen to paper or fingers to keys and set out their ideas and interpretations of what history is and what it means. Historians make use of historical evidence, primary sources such as; letters, books, documents or secondary sources i.e. other historians work, to lend credence to their interpretation of history. Without credible evidence history is just fiction that may have some basing in past events. One historian who makes use of historical evidence in their writing is Jill Lepore; in three essays on early America Lepore makes use of historical evidence well by using smaller historical examples…show more content… Lepore writes that in many people’s mind’s Benjamin Franklin is a “walking, talking, page a day desk calendar”, he is just a mouthpiece from which wise proverbs and idioms spout from. However Lepore challenges this idea and states that Franklin was “ a sucker for a good joke or, really, even a lousy one.” Lepore supports this claim by giving various examples of Franklin’s humor, such as; using the name “ FART-HING” as a pen name or mocking other almanac writers that predicted the weather by having “ omitted all the bad Weather…” as Poor Richards, another pen name of his. These are both good examples of how multifaceted a man Benjamin Franklin was, that even just within his humor he had multiple levels; from the relatively crude with his pen name choice and his writing of “a small masterpiece of eighteenth century bawdry” to a delightful wit with his proclivity to poke fun at everything from religion, writing his own chapter of The Old Testament, to himself, mentioning Benjamin Franklin in a preface written by Poor Richard. Benjamin Franklin was a complex man with many sides; from a grieving father to a stubborn politician, and it is incorrect to view him as just a wise old man that wrote proverbs. This is an example of how history has many sides and stories, relying on just one account or one side’s story is a sure-fire way to not get the complete truth. In addition to looking at all sides of a situation, historians have to make use of reliable sources and