Thomas Paine and the Promise of America

Book excerpt: This acclaimed biography “provides the most comprehensive assessment yet of [the Founding Father’s] controversial reputation” (Joseph J. Ellis, The New York Times Book Review). After leaving London for Philadelphia in 1774, Thomas Paine became one of the most influential political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age. Through writings like Common Sense, he not only turned America’s colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war but, as Harvey J. Kaye demonstrates, articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise. Thomas Paine and the Promise of America fiercely traces the revolutionary spirit that runs through American history—and demonstrates how that spirit is rooted in Paine’s legacy. With passion and wit, Kaye shows how Paine turned Americans into radicals—and how we have remained radicals ever since.