Description
Book SynopsisThe little-known story of the architectural project that lay at the heart of Tom Paine’s political blueprint for the United States.
Trade Review"Fascinating and important: Gray gives us Paine as we have never seen him before…as committed to building a new order as he was to tearing down the old." -- Kathleen DuVal - Wall Street Journal
"Ed Gray deftly reveals Paine as a polymath who designed innovative bridges as well as radical politics. Vividly written and rich with insight,
Tom Paine’s Iron Bridge illuminates the nexus of politics, science, and aesthetics in the Age of Revolutions." -- Alan Taylor, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Internal Enemy
"If you thought nothing more could be said of Thomas Paine, you were wrong. Ed Gray’s new book is a game-changer. An iron bridge, a unified economy, a legislative heart of the union: Ed Gray demonstrates as never before Paine’s greater vision." -- Ray Raphael, author of A People’s History of the American Revolution
"In his engaging new book, Edward Gray introduces us to Thomas Paine, the visionary nation-builder. Paine’s design for an iron bridge to transcend the new nation’s divisions was in its way as revolutionary as his call for an independent American republic in Common Sense." -- Harvey J. Kaye, author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
"Americans want to see the nation’s adolescence as a time of infinite possibility, and so did Thomas Paine. But Edward Gray’s engrossing account of Paine’s lifelong fixation on bridge-building reminds us that a host of human vices, from religious bigotry to political and sectional bias, were always there, waiting as patiently as the wolf at the door." -- Woody Holton, author of Abigail Adams
"Another gem from one of America's most imaginative historians." -- Gordon S. Wood, author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution
