Search results for ""Author Thomas Paine""

The writings that inspired the American Revolution—in an expanded new editionThomas Paine’s Common Sense may well be the most influential polemic in all of American history. Published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence, this incendiary call for Americans to revolt against British rule converted millions to the cause of independence and set out a vision of a just society liberated from the yoke of the crown. Paine’s pamphlet was the first to speak directly to a mass audience—and his assertive and often caustic style embodied the democratic spirit he advocated.This expanded edition also features Paine’s The American Crisis I, the first in a series of pamphlets aimed at bolstering American morale during the Revolution. An introduction by preeminent constitutional expert Richard Beeman traces Paine’s origins and illuminates the significance of these writings.F

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Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.

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Advocating equality, meritocracy, and social responsibility in plain language, Thomas Paine galvanized tens of thousands of readers and changed the framework of political discourse with this text. He was tried and convicted for sedition by the British government for publishing Rights of Man, Part Two but his direct style and provocative ideas were hugely influential.This edition situates Rights of Man within the discussion of the French Revolution in Britain and enables readers to understand the broader political debates of the 1790s. Appendices include responses to the French Revolution, Paine’s response to the Proclamation that declared his writing seditious, contemporary political philosophy by Richard Price and Edmund Burke, and cartoons satirizing Paine and his views.

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Escrito en un estilo vibrante y directo, " Sentido común " , del escritor y activista inglés Thomas Paine (1737-1809), es un texto imprescindible para comprender la forma y el fondo de la revolución que llevaría al nacimiento de los Estados Unidos de América. Publicada en 1776, pocos meses antes de la Declaración de Independencia, y concebida para la agitación política, la obra, cuyo título hace alusión, al motivo más palmario que había de impulsar la independencia de las colonias norteamericanas respecto a la metrópoli, se difundió como un incendio, animando a las trece colonias a sacudirse el yugo británico y a crear una sociedad nueva como causa del progreso de la humanidad. La importancia de " Sentido común " , sin embargo, no se agota en su contexto, sino que lo trasciende para convertirse en una de las reivindicaciones más brillantes de todos los tiempos de la igualdad de los hombres frente a la tiranía y el despotismo. Completan el volumen las ocho Cartas escritas a los ciudadan

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“In Common Sense a writer found his moment to change the world,” Alan Taylor writes in his introduction. When Paine’s attack on the British mixed constitution of kings, lords, and commons was published in January 1776, fighting had already erupted between British troops and American Patriots, but many Patriots still balked at seeking independence. “By discrediting the sovereign king,” Taylor argues, “Paine made independence thinkable—as he relocated sovereignty from a royal family to the collective people of a republic.” Paine’s American readers could conclude that they stood at “the center of a new and coming world of utopian potential.” The John Harvard Library edition follows the text of the expanded edition printed by the shop of Benjamin Towne for W. and T. Bradford of Philadelphia.

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Offering more detailed explanatory notes than earlier versions, this edition reprints together for the first time all of Paine's introductions to the versions published in his lifetime. In his own richly informed Introduction, Claeys elucidates the historical context and the subsequent influence of Paine’s text, as well as the major problems in interpreting Paine’s theory. Instructors will find this new edition a worthy counterpoint to the Hackett edition of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by J. G. A. Pocock.

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`An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot . . . it will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer.' Thomas Paine was the first international revolutionary. His Common Sense (1776) was the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution; his Rights of Man (1791-2) was the most famous defence of the French Revolution and sent out a clarion call for revolution throughout the world. He paid the price for his principles: he was outlawed in Britain, narrowly escaped execution in France, and was villified as an atheist and a Jacobin on his return to America. Paine loathed the unnatural inequalities fostered by the hereditary and monarchical systems. He believed that government must be by and for the people and must limit itself to the protection of their natural rights. But he was not a libertarian: from a commitment to natural rights he generated one of the first blueprints for a welfare state, combining a liberal order of civil rights with egalitarian constraints. This collection brings together Paine's most powerful political writings from the American and French revolutions in the first fully annotated edition of these works. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Thomas Paine’s loyalties were with universal and self-evident principles rather than with a particular group or nation, and it is this dimension that informed his most important works. This Norton Critical Edition shows how Paine’s fury at the British Empire, including its injustices to South Asians and Africans, shaped his first best seller, Common Sense, and how his direct involvement with the French Revolution pushed his ideas toward a unique form of democratic radicalism. Together with his rejection of organized religion, Paine’s radicalism resulted in his being one of the most hated men in both monarchial Britain and republican America. This volume includes J. M. Opal’s introduction, “Thomas Paine and the Revolutionary Enlightenment, 1770s–90s,” which provides essential biographical and historical details across three tumultuous decades. Paine’s most important works—from Common Sense (1776) through Agrarian Justice (1796)—are reprinted and are accompanied by explanatory annotations. Supporting materials include a wide range of documents from the turbulent years following the publication of both Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence. These include Pennsylvania’s gradual emancipation statute of the 1780s, an ex-slave’s impassioned call for revolutionary violence against European imperialists and masters, and a British conservative’s witty rejoinder to Paine’s vision of a brave new world. Four major interpretations of Paine’s work are provided by Nathan R. Perl-Rosenthal, Robert A. Ferguson, Gary Kates, and Gregory Claeys. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

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The Age of Reason is one of the most influential defences of Deism (the idea that God can be known without organized religion) ever written. This edition presents Part 1, Paine’s controversial philosophical argument against revealed religion, with representative excerpts of his biblical analysis from Parts 2 and 3.Appendices include numerous selections from Paine’s other religious writing, his Deist influences, and his contemporary opposition.

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An authoritative collection of Thomas Paine’s essential writings on American politics and governance—including the landmark Revolutionary War pamphlet, Common Sense After a life of obscurity and failure in England, Thomas Paine came to America in 1774 at age 37. Within fourteen months he published Common Sense, the most influential pamphlet of the American Revolution, and began a career that would see him hailed and reviled in the American nation he helped create. Collected in this volume are Paine's most influential texts. In Common Sense, he sets forth an inspiring vision of an independent America as an asylum for freedom and an example of popular self-government in a world oppressed by despotism and hereditary privilege. The American Crisis, begun during “the times that try men’s souls” in 1776, is a masterpiece of popular pamphleteering in which Paine vividly reports current developments, taunts and ridicules British adversaries, and enjoins his readers to remember the immense stakes of their struggle. They are joined in this invaluable reader by a selection of Paine’s other American pamphlets and his letters to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others.

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Offering more detailed explanatory notes than earlier versions, this edition reprints together for the first time all of Paine's introductions to the versions published in his lifetime. In his own richly informed Introduction, Claeys elucidates the historical context and the subsequent influence of Paine’s text, as well as the major problems in interpreting Paine’s theory. Instructors will find this new edition a worthy counterpoint to the Hackett edition of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by J. G. A. Pocock.

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Thomas Paine was the spark that ignited the American Revolution. More than just a Founding Father, he was a verbal bomb-thrower, a rationalist, and a rebel. In his influential pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis, Paine codified both colonial outrage and the intellectual justification for independence, arguing consistently and convincingly for Enlightenment values and the power of the people. Today, we are living in times that, as Paine famously said, "try men's souls." Whatever your politics, if you're seeking to understand the political world we live in, where better to look than Paine? The Daily Thomas Paine offers a year's worth of pithy and provocative quotes from this quintessentially American figure. Editor Edward G. Gray argues that we are living in a moment that Thomas Paine might recognize--or perhaps more precisely, a moment desperate for someone whose rhetoric can ignite a large-scale social and political transformation. Paine was a master of political rhetoric, from the sarcastic insult to the diplomatic apercu, and this book offers a sleek and approachable sampler of some of the sharpest bits from his oeuvre. As Paine himself says in the entry for January 20: "The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion." The Daily Thomas Paine--the newest addition to the University of Chicago Press's ongoing series of collected wisdom from notable writers--should prove equally incendiary and inspirational for contemporary readers with an eye for politics, even those who prefer the tweet to the pamphlet.

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This major collection demonstrates the extent to which Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an inspiration to the Americans in their struggle for independence, a passionate supporter of the French Revolution and perhaps the outstanding English radical writer of his age. It contains all of Paine's major works including The Rights of Man, his groundbreaking defence of the revolutionary cause in France, Common Sense, which won thousands over to the side of the American rebels, and the first part of The Age of Reason (Part One), a ferocious attack on Christianity. The shorter pieces - on capital punishment, social reform and the abolition of slavery - also confirm the great versatility and power of this master of democratic prose.

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One of the great classics on democracy, Rights of Man was published in England in 1791 as a vindication of the French Revolution and a critique of the British system of government. In direct, forceful prose, Paine defends popular rights, national independence, revolutionary war, and economic growth - all considered dangerous and even seditious issues. In his introduction Eric Foner presents an overview of Paine's career as political theorist and pamphleteer, and supplies essential background material to Rights of Man. He discusses how Paine created a language of modern politics that brought important issues to the common man and the working classes and assesses the debt owed to Paine by the American and British radical traditions.

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