Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations

by Craig Nelson

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.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, American Revolution, Philosophy

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

CRAIG NELSON is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Rocket Men, as well as several previous books, including V is for Victory, Pearl Harbor, The Age of Radiance (a finalist for the PEN Award), The First Heroes, Thomas Paine (winner of the Henry Adams Prize), and Let’s Get Lost (short-listed for W.H. Smith’s Book of the Year).
His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Soldier of Fortune, Salon, National Geographic, The New England Review, Popular Science, California Quarterly, Blender, Semiotext(e), Reader’s Digest, and a host of other publications; he has been profiled in Variety, Interview, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out.
Before turning to writing, Nelson was vice president and executive editor of Harper & Row, Hyperion, and Random House, where he oversaw the publishing of twenty national bestsellers and worked with such authors as John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Lily Tomlin, Philip Glass, Rita Mae Brown, Steve Wozniak, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Alex Trebek, William Shatner, the Rolling Stones, Orson Welles, Robert Evans, David Lynch, Roseanne Barr, and Barry Williams.
He is a graduate of UT Austin, and attended the USC Film School, the UCLA writing program, and the Harvard-Radcliffe publishing course. He turned to writing full-time in 2002.
As a historian he is known for epic moments in the American experience — Pearl Harbor; the race to the Moon; the nation’s founding; and the nuclear era — that are both engrossingly page-turning and distinguished for their scholarship. Massively researched from scratch, his books are eye-opening and definitive accounts of the profound moments that made us who we are today.
Craig lives in an 1867 department store in Greenwich Village.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How could the American people ignore this hero who had convinced their ancestors to renounce the depraved government of their home land and build a new world? This author who had conceived and written the very principles on which their nation was founded? This theorist whose writings were the very essence of what it meant to be an American? This man who had fought so publicly for decades over the United States’ very right to exist as something beyond an abused and belittled colony?”

One could make a fairly convincing argument that it is Thomas Paine, not George Washington, who deserves the moniker “Father of Our Country.” If Washington was the engineer of American independence then it was Thomas Paine who was its architect.

Thanks in no small part to Christopher Hitchens, I have read at least five books written by or about Mr. Paine. He, like Orwell and Nietzsche and Plath, has become something of an obsession of mine. I find him intensely interesting and quizzically paradoxical. By far his most dangerous commodities were his thoughts; they brought him, on almost every publication, to the brink of either the gallows or the guillotine. His ideas landed him in prison for fear that they would topple empires and incite revolutions (they arguably did both). His progressive notions are the reason he is still revered in some circles and reviled in others.

“The name is enough. Every person has ideas of him. Some respect his genius and dread the man, some reverence his political while they hate his religious opinions. Some love the man but not his private manners. Indeed, he has done nothing which has not extremes in it. He never appears but we love and hate him. He is as great a paradox as ever appeared in human nature.” -Anonymous Paine Contemporary

Thomas Paine believed that a republic had to be populated by educated and selfless citizens, otherwise it would fall into the hands of a “craven mob.” Has any idea in American history ever been more prophetic? His circle of supporters included the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, while his long list of enemies, which included John Adams* and his son John Quincy Adams, was just as formidable.

"I detest that book and its tendencies from the bottom of my heart.” -John Adams on The Rights of Man

*NOTE: to be fair, John Adams, especially later in his life, rarely had a good word to say about anyone.

“It is said he was always a peevish intimate, but Thomas Paine was one of the most instructive men I have ever known. He had a surprising memory and a brilliant fancy. His mind was a storehouse of facts and useful observations. He was full of lively anecdotes and ingenious, original, pertinent remarks upon almost every subject.” -Joel Barlow

Craig Nelson’s biography on Thomas Paine is well written and should be of interest to all history buffs regardless of their political or theological leanings. I thought I already knew a lot about the man and still I learned a great deal. Highly recommended.

"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." -Christopher Hitchens, 2007

[Alan Tomkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. More than just a well crafted biography of an American founding father, this book is a fascinating thrill ride through the Age of Enlightenment's republican revolutions in America and France of the late eighteenth century. Paine's outsized and enduring influence on politics and human rights is explored and elucidated through gripping narrative history. The story of Paine emigrating from England to the American colonies, his role in the American revolution, then his subsequent life at the center of the French revolution, narrowly and miraculously escaping the guillotine during the Terror is riveting and dramatic. His tragic final years are sad, but somehow predictable. I was moved and educated by this fine work of history. This book is so good that I am sure I will reread it and refer back to it again and again. I highly recommend it.

[Theo Logos · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Ultimately, Paine did achieve the great Enlightenment dream of a global fame lasting for centuries. Instead of the Roman version of heaven, however, his reputation has drifted through something of a limbo; the dead man alternately repudiated and honored, just as the living one had been befriended and reviled.”

Thomas Paine was the most revolutionary of America’s Revolutionary generation. Because of this, his memory uniquely resisted being turned in to a marble saint or demigod as has been the fate of many of the other founders. He was simply too dangerous to be deified into that mythic pantheon we Americans were taught to revere in our grammar schools. He played major parts in both the American and French Revolutions, and came very near to igniting another in Great Britain. He attacked governments, churches, and oligarchs with absolutely no regard to politics, diplomacy, or personal safety, ever eschewing the pragmatism of realpolitik for his pure, utopian, Enlightenment vision.

So, if you are less familiar with Thomas Paine than his Revolutionary contemporaries, there’s a reason for that. Paine has been reviled as much or more than he has been honored in our history. Even today, his ideas are still untamed, can still stir controversy. He never forsook the pure fire of the Enlightenment ideal behind the American Revolution, and thus never calcified into convenient marble myth.

Author Craig Nelson has written a truly dynamic biography of this fascinating man. He covers the man, his writings, his times, and his legacy equally well. He treats Paine sympathetically, yet is no sycophant. And he puts Paine into the perspective of his times, by explaining that Paine was far less radical then than he is perceived now. Nelson writes that much of what Paine wrote in his controversial The Age of Reason (his book supporting Deism and attacking revealed religion) were ideas common to most of the great men of his time (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, etc.) but they were careful not to share these thoughts with the common folk. The line that Paine crossed, that which made him dangerous, was that he wrote for the common man, exposing the masses to ideas the elites felt they were not ready for. Even Paine’s great enemy William Pitt the Younger, who hounded him out of England, banned his books, tried him in absentia for seditious libel, and carried on a miniature reign of terror in England to put down what Paine had stirred up, said of him that Paine’s The Rights of Man is right, but what can I do?

Nelson casts Paine as the Enlightenment prophet who transmitted the ideas of the elite few to the massed many, and that may just be why Paine’s ideas are still vibrant and relevant while his contemporaries have to settle for being marble myths.


”Thomas Paine needs no monument by hands. He has erected a monument in the hearts of all who love liberty.”
Andrew Jackson

[Todd Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Paine, revolutionary figure, pamphleteer and author of 'Common Sense', 'The Ascent of Man' and 'The Age of Reason' among others was a complex and contradictory figure of the war for independence. Alternately celebrated and reviled he was the best selling author of his day who donated the profits from his work or waived them to keep the cost low so that it may be read by the greatest number of citizens. In contrast, he was sentenced to, and escaped death in two countries and engendered widespread hatred as an atheist and a drunkard.

Craig Nelson does an excellent job depicting Paine's life and the times in which he lived. Though he clearly has an affection for his subject, he doesn't balk from the less flattering episodes of Paine's life.

Fearless, foolhardy, conceited and brilliant - Paine's work is still widely read today.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book introduced to me the actual events in Thomas Paine's life. I had read most of his major works, or large portions there of. His political ideas were somewhat familiar, so there were no big surprises. The book also filled me in on Paine's deism. Evidently, he had a believe in an afterlife for those that lived a good life. I had thought, in the past, that his deism was just a cover up for a basically atheist belief. However, the book relates that his belief in a god was genuine, but definitely not a Christian one. This is the first book I've read by Nelson, and I was not disappointed. In the future, I will not have a problem picking up another one of his books.

[Jon Gautier · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me this one was tough sledding; I often found reasons to not pick it up, but I can’t quite say why. It is well written and (mostly) engaging. It has some interesting facts that were new to me. Part of the problem, as the author explains, is that there is little reliable first hand evidence about Paine in the way of letters and diaries, and much of what is there is biased and self-serving, both pro- and anti-Paine. So though it is a biography, it relies on long quotes from the published writings of Paine and others, and it also has some extended explications of historical context that are not well-woven into the narrative of Paine’s life. Not that these bits aren’t interesting, they are. But they create a disjointed quality that made for me a difficult read. The book also gives Paine a very exalted place in history that I find (in my admitted ignorance) hard to believe. I’d like to read other biographies of Paine and then revisit this one. Maybe one day. Overall, I’m glad I read it, you might be as well.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author had a challenge here—Paine was a thinking man, not a man of physical action, so his biography was more about his influence than about what he did, although he had a few harrowing adventure, like barely missing a date with the guillotine. I did not come away with a full understanding of the true character of the man. He was complex and the reactions to him were complicated and diverse. But his affect was huge and he certainly deserves a place on the top shelf of American heroes.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were a few minor historical inaccuracies (for example where Marat was stabbed), but overall an excellent read. It is, however, massively contextual, and you learn far more about other figures and the times of Thomas Paine than Thomas Paine himself. However, as a history lover, I really enjoyed the all-encompassing approach of this book.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book. The way Paine was treated towards the end of his life is despicable for such an ardent supporter of American liberty.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting portrait of a man relevant to the Founding but not as popularly accepted when compared with other names. I enjoyed the expanded view of his spiritual beliefs, and the quotes from his contemporaries expressing great skepticism for organized religion.

[Rossrn Nunamaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't too familiar with Paine's life and only knew of his writings, though could not say that I had studied or known them well.

Nelson did a good job of explaining in great detail Paine's life and work in the context of the times.

In his lifetime, Paine was friends with Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the other founders of our nation. He was also friends with Lafayette and met with Napoleon, who claimed to keep a copy of Rights of Man under his pillow. In essence, every figure of the day knew, met with, or contested Paine's writings.

Yet today, most people, like myself know little of this founding father.

Nelson's greatest contribution was establishing the context of the times and how Paine thoroughly altered western, and particularly Americans thinking. It is hard to believe his writing, then, garnered him death sentences from England and France (maybe the only thing the two nations agreed upon), yet today we don't really recognize his writing as controversial or radical, because so much of it is 'common sense'.

Great book and wonderful History and Political Philosophy refresher.

[Ronda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is good for me to gain some knowledge of what happened so long ago and to read about someone who isn't studied about in school as much as say George Washington or Napoleon, and was a part of the beginnings of America and influencial to France. The author did an excellent job of explaining events, how life was for Thomas Paine and how he worked together with the "better well-known" founding fathers.

[Jason Hissong · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is pretty good, if a little long. Paine is one of the most important figures of both the American and French Revolutions and oftentime I feel he takes a back seat to the Founding Fathers who became President and Franklin.

Still, this is a good comprehensive look at Paine's life and well worth a read if one's into that sort of thing.

[Jeffrey Powanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long but consistently interesting biography of Thomas Paine, the pugnacious Englishman who rallied colonists toward independence during the American Revolution, and then went to France and got involved in the French Revolution, which nearly got him killed.

Paine's adventures in France are the most fascinating part of this biography, which is exactly what I hoped for as I had recently finished a book on the French Revolution and was curious about Paine's involvement. Amazing that he became an honorary French citizen and a member of the National Convention even though he couldn't speak French. Since he was Quaker-born, Paine opposed the death penalty, which quickly put him at odds with radical Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre, who sent hundreds of people to the guillotine. Robespierre had Paine arrested and thrown in Luxembourg Prison to await his execution, which he narrowly avoided. While in prison, Paine composed his anti-religion pamphlet Age of Reason in 1794. After the Reign of Terror ended, Paine was released from prison and he subsequently published Age of Reason, Part II. What a remarkable man to have had his hand in two revolutions!

During his lifetime, Paine was the world's bestselling author, although he received little money for his writings in copyright-free America and later died a pauper. Unlike other Founders, Paine never owned slaves or profited from the slave trade. To 21st Century Americans, Paine not only was right about everything he argued—he presciently predicted the rise of democratic republics worldwide—he was also morally right.

Paine was well-educated and the grandson of a lawyer, but he didn't attend college. He had various jobs, including staymaker (corset maker) and excise officer before achieving notoriety as a writer in middle age (he was 37 when he wrote Common Sense). Many of his early works were published anonymously to avoid arrest and imprisonment.

Paine married twice. His first wife died in childbirth. He separated from his second wife after only three years. Little is known about them, weakening the private, personal story of Paine’s life.

He met Benjamin Franklin in England in 1774, and Franklin suggested he emigrate to the colonies. Paine arrived in Philadelphia in November of that year, barely surviving typhoid fever contracted during the voyage. (Nelson makes it clear that transatlantic passage at that time was extremely risky; many passengers died from disease or starvation.)

Once in the colonies, Paine quickly embarked on a career as a pamphleteer, and the rest, as they say, is history. Although he never attended college, Paine's writing demonstrates an autodidact's understanding of law, government, economics, history, and current events. His pamphlets Common Sense, The American Crisis, The Public Good, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason are clearly-written essays that explain the core tenets of the Enlightenment for all people.

In his pamphlets, Paine never cites sources for his ideas, presenting them as his own. He also demonstrates rhetorical genius in his arguments, which resulted in such memorable phrases as, "These are the times that try men's souls," written during the Continental Army’s retreat from New York. General George Washington had Paine’s pamphlet read aloud to his troops, rousing them to victory in the Battle of Trenton, a turning point in the war.

Like Franklin, Paine was also an inventor. In 1787, he submitted a design for a single-arch iron bridge across the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. The bridge was never built, but Paine patented its design.

Unfortunately, biographers have scant documentary evidence of Paine's life, so this is not an intimate biography. However, readers can glean aspects of Paine's personality from his writing, where there is abundant evidence of his wit, wisdom, and biting sarcasm. Common Sense is only 79 pages, so best to start there. As Nelson says, it's had "the greatest public impact on American history of any piece of writing," and it's surprisingly fresh writing for a pamphlet that was published almost 250 years ago.

Paine would be more revered today if he had avoided making the following four mistakes during his lifetime:

1. Attacking George Washington for not coming to his aid.
2. Offending Robert Morris, a major financier of the American Revolution.
3. Pushing for King Louis XVI and his family to be banished rather than executed, in opposition to the French National Convention.
4. Attacking organized religion.

It was that last mistake that cost Paine dearly. Federalists such as Sam Adams despised Paine, and even Thomas Jefferson, a fellow Deist, tread lightly around him. Before Paine's death, gossip, disinformation, and innuendo severely tarnished his reputation; James Cheetham's Life of Thomas Paine, published in 1809, marked him as a perverse, dissolute, drunken atheist, a characterization that persisted for two centuries.

Paine's reputation has risen in the last two decades (presumably helped by this biography), but he's not as esteemed as other Founders. That's too bad, because Paine is right up there with Adams, Jefferson, and Madison in terms of his historical importance to the United States of America (a name he coined!) as well as to France. Maybe playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda should have written a musical about Paine instead of Hamilton.

For more thoughts on Thomas Paine, see my blog entry: Celebrating Thomas Paine, the Radical Founder.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among this country's Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine probably had the worst luck of all. In his public life, he managed to hit the hate trifecta - America, Britain and France. His private life wasn't so hot, either. Craig Nelson's excellent, albeit hopefully titled, biography tells a sad, yet very compelling, story.

Things started out just swell. Paine's "Common Sense" was hailed throughout the colonies and ranks with the Declaration of Independence in its importance to the revolutionary cause. But it goes pretty sideways from there. Paine life's offers proof of John Lennon's famous assertion that "genius is pain." But Nelson tells us a good deal of the hurt was self-inflicted. For one, the guy seldom lived in his own home, preferring to crash the homes of a series of remarkably understanding, but soon very annoyed, friends and admirers. For another, he possessed an ego that literally spanned the ocean. And it got him into a mess of trouble on both sides.

Nelson does a great job of putting Paine's life in the context of a swirling, dramatic era. Major change was in the air as citizenry on both sides of the Atlantic decided the monarchy wasn't really their thing. But revolutions can be messy things. Paine constanty found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he seldom knew when to leave. He narrowly averted prison in England and execution in France.

Along with " Common Sense," Paine's "Rights of Man" played an integral role in stirring the masses. Nelson's deeply researched and well-written bio leaves us with the knowledge that his efforts were well worth it to most, but not so great for Mr. Paine. It's a solid addition for any library of American Revolutionary lore.

[Nick Solheim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Try as he might, Craig Nelson cannot change my unregenerate, Federalist heart about Thomas Paine. That being said, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations is a thorough and sympathetic biography of the author of Common Sense.

This book follows Paine from his youth in England, to his participation in the American Revolution and his authorship of many essential American documents. It then descends into the sadder part of Paine's life (the latter half) in which he participates in the French Revolution, is thrown into prison, goes on a tirade against President George Washington, and ends up an alleged drunkard and egotist back in America.

This biography of Thomas Paine certainly does not have a happy ending, but it provides a comprehensive overview of the life of one of America's founders.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What was truly radical about him [Paine], in fact, was wholly a matter of class; he explained modern, patrician ideas in essays that any plebeian could read and understand." (81)

"Known today as a patriarch of conservatism, Burke was in his own time no Tory, but a liberal Whig, and not even an Englishman, but an Irishman, born and raised in Dublin with a Catholic mother, an Anglican father, and an education at a Quaker boarding school. ... Burke and Paine immediately struck up a friendship, so it is easy to imagine them spending countless hours together in animated conversation..." (179)

"'Tyrants in general shed blood on plan or from passion; he seems to have shed it only because he could not be quiet.'" (Paine on Napoleon, 299)

[Bill Winett · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with most biographies, I don't know enough to judge the book's accuracy. But I can say it was well-written, entertaining, and (hopefully) informative and enlightening.

I am, however, left with one question. Throughout the book, the author relates how Paine would donate all of his income from his writings; and how he so often had to live off of friends and admirers. Yet the author begins a sentence near the end: "While the legendarily impoverished Paine left behind an estate of about one million dollars in today's money...". This opens up a whole area for investigation. Was he truly ever impoverished, or was he an obsessive spendthrift? Did he really donate all his income? What was in his estate that led to that value, and where did it come from?

[Karen Koppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, objective biography of Thomas Paine - who was a huge influence on the populace to promote the idea of republican/democratic government vs monarchy. His pamphlets (Common Sense, etc) were made available to everyone; he didn't really make any money from them. He was also active in the French Revolution and tried to convince the English to embrace democracy vs monarchy. But the English threw him out because they supported the monarchy, and at the end the French imprisoned him because he wasn't in favor of beheading their king (he wasn't "revolutionary" enough!). This book provided a good review of the French Revolution which I found particularly interesting.

[Marc K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook
Obviously fascinating looking at the life of the person who created the vision that our founding fathers executed.
He is a utopian visionary and unlike the left's version(Marx & Engels) it obviously can be executed as exemplified by the American experience, but like all utopian visions it can go horribly wrong as shown by the French revolution.
He definitely understood ideas, but not people. He burned so many bridges and was at times very petty with the greatest men in our history. In the case of the French revolution he couldn't see the revolutionaries weren't visionaries, but paranoid, violent, incoherent, controlling extremists.
Audiobook flows nicely.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easy read, but one that took me back to high school history of the American Revolution——how this country was formed and those who did it——Franklin, Washington. And then there was Thomas Paine. His roll was lesser known to us these days, but after reading this book, I found it was just as vital. His brilliance was in his ideas and this phamplets—Common Sense and The Rights of Man.

[Rob1 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main issue with this biography is a lack of source material which caused Nelson to heavily supplement it with the surrounding history and info on the other founding fathers. I wanted to read the book to understand Paine and feel as though it could have been better achieved through the brevity and conciseness Pain utilized through his pamphlets.

[Mr. Kovach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. Deeply researched and well-written history about Paine and the American and French Revolutions, various historical characters involved, and the enduring societal ramifications. Highly interesting and readable. The only minor hitch is that Nelson has a tendency to bury a sentence's lead way at the back of the sentence. So good, though, and I will seek out more of his work.

[Steve Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the unabridged audio version of this book.

It’s an excellent and in depth exploration of the man, his works, and the age he lived in. It’s also very well written.

I may have to check out Nelson’s other works.

[Douglas Graney · Rating 1 out of 5]

You learn about the culture, surroundings, contemporaries and concerns of the era, albeit dully written. But the author doesn’t unlock the man. Want to know Paine? Read Common Sense.

[Matthew Rowbotham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about a fascinating individual who did so much to shape the modern world and died in such strange and sad circumstances.

[Curt Steinmetz]

One of the best historical biographies I've ever read. So it turns out that old Tom Paine was one of the most important and influential people of the modern world. Seriously.

[Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book! It has been quite a while since I read a history book and this one has made me realize I need to step up my historical game!
SO much I never knew about Thomas Paine, and now I know!
The reader did a fine job as well, so five stars it is.

[Glenn]

I enjoyed the history presented in this book.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorites! A very easy read for the topic covered