Tom Paine: A Political Life

"More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world." So begins John Keane's magnificent and award-winning (the Fraunces Tavern Book Award) biography of one of democracy's greatest champions. Among friends and enemies alike, Paine earned a reputation as a notorious pamphleteer, one of the greatest political figures of his day, and the author of three best-selling books, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.

Setting his compelling narrative against a vivid social backdrop of prerevolutionary America and the French Revolution, John Keane melds together the public and the shadowy private sides of Paine's life in a remarkable piece of scholarship. This is the definitive biography of a man whose life and work profoundly shaped the modern age.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 01/21/2003
ISBN: 9780802139641
Pages: 672
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.90w x 1.90d

Review Citations: New York Times 03/09/2003 pg. 28