Thomas Paine

The mind of Thomas Paine was gifted to the American Revolution at just the right time. Right when the fervor of the revolutionary spirit was beginning to subside, the pen of Thomas Paine came along and ignited the fires of American liberty once again. Yet decades later, when Paine returned to the American shores that he helped liberate, he was met with a bitter homecoming. Paine had arrived right on the heels of his association with bloody upheavals in revolutionary France and the publication of his unapologetically anti-Christian tracts, which did go over well in an America swept by the Second Great Awakening. Both of these aspects of his intellectual life made him an insufferable outcast, shunned by nearly all of his former associates. But Thomas Paine always knew that life was a gamble, and depending on the factors involved he was variously known as the greatest hero of the republic, or the greatest villain.

Now that the dust of history has finally begun to settle, we can get a much clearer view of who Thomas Paine was. This book seeks to cut through the hype and hyperbole to present to you the life of an unapologetic patriot and inveterate freethinker—Thomas Paine, the father of the American Revolution.