Thomas Paine

This book explores Thomas Paine's French decade, from the publication of the first part of Rights of Man in the spring of 1791 to his return trip to the United States in the fall of 1802. It examines Paine's multifarious activities during this period as a thinker, writer, member of the French Convention, lobbyist, adviser to French governments, officious diplomat and propagandist. Using previously neglected sources and archival material, Carine Lounissi demonstrates both how his republicanism was challenged, bolstered and altered by this French experience, and how his positions at key moments of the history of the French experiment forced major participants in the Revolution to defend or question the kind of regime or of republic they wished to set up. As a member of the Lafayette circle when writing the manuscript of Rights of Man, of the Girondin constellation in the Convention, one of the few democrats who defended universal suffrage after Thermidor, and as a member of the Constitutional Circle which promoted a kind of republic which did not match his ideas, Paine baffled his contemporaries and still puzzles the present-day scholar. This book intends to offer a new perspective on Paine, and on how this major agent of revolutions contributed to the debate on the French Revolution both in France and outside France.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the man who gave the name to the United States, became known as the Voice of the Revolution. Paine was one of the most radical and outspoken figures of the eighteenth century - an independent thinker on a level with Voltaire and Goethe. The self-educated former tax collector was famed for his fiery disposition and brilliant way with words in defense of liberty. A cabin boy on board a privateer, twice married, first an official and later a victim of the French revolutionary government, at odds with his fellow American rebels, and constantly beset by money problems, Paine lived a full and exciting life. In addition to his better known accomplishments, he designed bridges, a "smokeless candle" and a detailed plan for the invasion of Britain - and all this from a man who abruptly turned from being a craftsman to a statesman at the age of thirty-seven. Together with his colleagues Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Paine provided the philosophical underpinnings for the new nation. He is best known for his radical works The Age of Reason, Rights of Man, and, above all, Common Sense.

A “brief but potent” appreciation of one of the most influential and revolutionary works of political thought “mixing biography, criticism and philosophy” (Los Angeles Times). Christopher Hitchens, the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of God Is Not Great, has been called a Tom Paine for our times. In this addition to the Books that Changed the World Series, Hitchens vividly introduces Paine and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, the world’s foremost defense of democracy. An outraged response to Edmund Burke’s attack on the French Revolution, Paine’s immortal text is a passionate defense of man’s inalienable rights, and the key to his reputation. Ever since the day of its publication in 1791, Declaration of the Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted. But in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. Famous as a polemicist and provocative commentator, Hitchens himself is a political descendant of the great pamphleteer. Here, he demonstrates how Paine’s book became the philosophical cornerstone of the United States of America, and how “in a time when both rights and reason are under several kinds of open and covert attack, the life and writing of Thomas Paine will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.” Enlivened by Hitchens’s extraordinary prose, this “elegant and useful primer . . . ought still to engage us all” (The Guardian). “Paine, as Hitchens notes in this lucid and fast-moving appreciation, has no proper memorial anywhere; this slender book makes a good start.” —Kirkus Reviews

From New York Times bestselling author and Founding Fathers' biographer Harlow Giles Unger comes the astonishing biography of the man whose pen set America ablaze, inspiring its revolution, and whose ideas about reason and religion continue to try men's souls. Thomas Paine's words were like no others in history: they leaped off the page, inspiring readers to change their lives, their governments, their kings, and even their gods. In an age when spoken and written words were the only forms of communication, Paine's aroused men to action like no one else. The most widely read political writer of his generation, he proved to be more than a century ahead of his time, conceiving and demanding unheard-of social reforms that are now integral elements of modern republican societies. Among them were government subsidies for the poor, universal housing and education, pre- and post-natal care for women, and universal social security. An Englishman who emigrated to the American colonies, he formed close friendships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and his ideas helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. However, the world turned against Paine in his later years. While his earlier works, Common Sense and Rights of Man, attacked the political and social status quo here on earth, The Age of Reason attacked the status quo of the hereafter. Former friends shunned him, and the man America had hailed as the muse of the American Revolution died alone and forgotten. Packed with action and intrigue, soldiers and spies, politics and perfidy, Unger's Thomas Paine is a much-needed new look at a defining figure.

"We can call Thomas Paine-eminent Founder, verbal bomb-thrower, Deist, revolutionary, and rationalist-the spark of the American Revolution. In his influential pamphlets, Paine codified both colonial outrage and the intellectual justification for independence, arguing consistently and convincingly for Enlightenment values and the power of the people. He was a master of political rhetoric, from the sarcastic insult to the diplomatic aperçu. Today, we are living in times that, as Paine said, try men's souls. Whatever your politics, if you're seeking a new Paine-with rhetoric to ignite social and political transformations-where better to start than at the source? This is a work that provides quotes from Thomas Paine's writings"--

A fresh new look at the Enlightenment intellectual who became the most controversial of America's founding fathers Despite his being a founder of both the United States and the French Republic, the creator of the phrase "United States of America," and the author of Common Sense, Thomas Paine is the least well known of America's founding fathers. This edifying biography by Craig Nelson traces Paine's path from his years as a London mechanic, through his emergence as the voice of revolutionary fervor on two continents, to his final days in the throes of dementia. By acquainting us as never before with this complex and combative genius, Nelson rescues a giant from obscurity-and gives us a fascinating work of history.

Examines the important role and influence of Thomas Paine and his political writings on promoting a revolutionary spirit and radical fervor, from the time of America's colonial rebellion and Revolutionary War to the present day.