Thomas paine biography reviews
- You honestly can't go wrong reading this one.
- Christopher Hitchens' review of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" is both an insightful homage and a contemporary critique of a seminal work in political.
- Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.
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Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography
― Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
While there is no imperfect time to read about Thomas Paine or read Christopher Hitchens, 2016 with Brexit and Trump seem to almost BEG for a steroid shot of rationality and intelligence. I read this because I was tired of the news, tired of the discourse, tired of FB debates and arguments that seemed inane and inept (I once saw a debate over some political issue that was carried out entirely using memes). I wondered how we could have dropped from a period where big ideas were discussed by big men (yes, and big women: see Mary Wollstonecraft) to this?
Anyway, about 10 years ago The Atlantic Monthly Press published this book as part of their series Books that Changed the World. Think about this for a minute. Thomas Paine, a largely self-educated son of a corset-ma
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Paul Foot
One of the most comforting facts about the tempestuous life of Thomas Paine is that he didn’t do anything of any significance until he was nearly 40. If there hadn’t been a series of revolutions and threatened revolutions in the last quarter of the 18th century, no one would ever have heard of Thomas Paine. He would have lived and died a garrulous customs official with a taste for booze and political conversation. As it was, he left his native England for America on the eve of the Wars of Independence, and found himself, as a budding journalist , 39 years old, embroiled at once in the mighty arguments which racked the American colonies. Should they fight the British Crown or should they seek compromise? The merchants and many of the landed gentry argued for the latter. Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet, Common Sense, which sold more copies to Americans than any other book except the Bible. At least 150,000 were sold – and even that fantastic figure understates its impact.
‘Freddie’ Ayer is an academic (a legend indeed, for any of us who were educated at the University of
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Thomas Paine: His Life, His Time and the Birth of the Modern Nations by Craig Nelson
Thomas Paine was one of the key political thinkers, writers and conversationalists of the Enlightenment. Credited with either formulating or certainly popularising the notion that the source of power lies in The People and that the government - any government - is only legitimate by the mandate of the population. Born in England a commoner, not very academically successful, trained as a staymaker and worked as excise officer (so did Rabbie Burns, what is it with the 18th century democrats and tax collection?); he soaked in the cafe culture of Enlightenment London but came to prominence after his arrival in America with nothing but a recommendation letter from Benjamin Franklin. He went on to become an incredibly popular pamphletist and his Common Sense
is credited with implanting the idea of independence and a republican government firmly in the heads of the American colonials and arguably formed the basis for the Declaration of Independence.
He supported the American Revolution throughout
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