FROM THE PUBLISHER
"The revolutionary spirit that runs throughout American history, and whose
founding father and greatest advocate was Thomas Paine, is traced in Thomas
Paine and the Promise of America. Showing how Paine turned Americans into
radicals - and how we have remained radicals at heart ever since - Harvey J.
Kaye presents the nation's democratic story." Beginning with Paine's life
and ideas and following their vigorous influence through to our own day,
Thomas Paine and the Promise of America reveals how, while the powers that
be repeatedly sought to suppress, defame, and most recently, co-opt Paine's
memory, generations of radical and liberal Americans turned to Paine for
inspiration as they endeavored to expand American freedom, equality, and
democracy.
FROM THE CRITICS
Joseph J. Ellis - The New York Times
Kaye's core argument, however, goes far beyond the claim that Paine was a
great journalist. Writing with the passion of a defense attorney whose
client has been wrongfully sentenced to obscurity by what he calls a
plutocratic phalanx of ''the powerful, propertied, prestigious and pious,''
Kaye contends that Paine, alone among the founding generation, saw to the
very heart of the American promise embodied in the principles of 1776. Even
more than Thomas Jefferson, whose revolutionary vision was blurred by the
stigma of slavery, Paine was a cleareyed radical.
Publishers Weekly
Kaye offers a masterful and eloquent study of the man he reestablishes as
the key figure in the American Revolution and the radical politics that
followed it. Focusing on close readings of Paine's major writings, Kaye
devotes the first half of the book to Paine's role in the seething fervor
for American liberty and independence and his influence on the French
Revolution. In Common Sense (1763), which sold 150,000 copies in just a few
months, Paine advocated self-government and democracy in the colonies,
accused the British of corruption and tyranny, and urged "Americans" to
rebel. He championed representative democracy and argued that government
should act for the public good. Paine's contributions were not limited to
his own time; Kaye traces Paine's influence on American rebels and reformers
from William Lloyd Garrison and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Emma Goldman and
Eugene Debs in the second half of his book. In 1980, Ronald Reagan quoted
him-"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"-in his
acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention. As historian
Kaye (The American Radical) points out, Paine-"the greatest radical of a
radical age"-would have been surprised to learn that conservatives, whose
values he opposed, had used his words in their cause.
Kirkus Reviews How the essence and works of the American Revolution firebrand have been lionized, vilified, largely ignored and strangely reclaimed. Kaye (Social Change, Univ. of Wisonsin, Green Bay) marshals the essential life details of Paine (1737-1809), erstwhile British corset-maker turned privateer and an immigrant to the Colonies on the eve of what he himself would indelibly characterize as "the times that try men's souls." But this is not a towering biography; instead, the author focuses on the impact of Paine's writing, among the most widely circulated printed material both in America and Europe in his day, and on the politics and statesmanship of a revolutionary age. Paine's ability to instantly make enemies was evident even in 1776, when his "Common Sense" pamphlet was rallying the cause for independence; John Adams, for instance, was so opposed to Paine's radical democratic ideas as to openly suggest that the circumstances of the latter's parentage involved a wolf bitch in rut with a wild boar. Unrelenting, however, whenever he perceived a drift toward Federalist concentration of power, Paine even produced material insulting George Washington. But in repudiating Christian scripture with terms like "mythology" in later works, Paine set the all-time negative example for American political figures (including his like-minded friend, Thomas Jefferson) to avoid. With open bias, Kaye laments the fact that Paine spent some two centuries alienated from the mainstream. It was not modern Democrats who rediscovered Paine-the original proponent of limited government, welfare support for the indigent and, yes, even social security-it was Ronald Reagan. Invoking the line from "Common Sense" that "We haveit in our power to begin the world again" at the 1980 Republican Convention, Reagan reinvented Paine for the party, an act the author avers has actually subordinated Paine's ideals. First-rate analysis of original American political thought that has survived deep ecclesiastical