Thomas Paine and the Promise of America A History & Biography [Paperback]

Thomas Paine was one of the most remarkable political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age. Through writings likeCommon Senseand words such as The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth, We have it in our power to begin the world over again, and These are the times that try men's souls 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.

Harvey J. Kayeis the Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of WisconsinGreen Bay. An award-winning author and editor, his numerous books includeAre WeGood Citizens?andThe American Radical.

The moment I finished this book (at four in the morning) I couldn't wait to call Harvey Kaye and leave a message that I was suing him for inducing insomnia. I couldn't put the thing down! The story of Thomas Paine--then and now, for the man and his ideas are very much alive today--stirs the heart, moves the mind and routs the demon of despair. The best political book of the year! Bill Moyers

Thomas Paine has at last found a worthy defender in Harvey Kaye, a gifted historian whose account of Paine is nearly as lively and feisty as its subject. Readers of all political persuasions will find this book of compelling interest, and will find it much harder henceforth to deny Paine's importance--not only in his own time, but in the entire sweep of American history. Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America

If the rights of man are to be upheld in a dark time, we shall require an age of reason. Harvey Kaye's lucid work helps create the free citizen's memorial to Thomas Paine, who is still shamefully unacknowledged by the democratic lcv