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

Despite 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 three of the biggest bestsellers of the eighteenth century, Thomas Paine is perhaps the least well known x and the most controversial x of the American founding fathers. Unlike such friends and allies as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and John Adams, the worldxs first crusader for the public good has always remained a somewhat indistinct figure. How this lower- class British tradesman managed not only to have written the cornerstone of American democracy, Common Sense, but become a revered citizen of the world are questions that have challenged historians for centuries, and have more often than not left us with biographies that are more monumental than illuminating.