Tom Paine: A Political Life (Grove Great Lives)

Keane, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802139647 ISBN 13: 9780802139641

Publisher: Black Cat, 2003

"More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world." So begins John Keane's magnificent and award-winning (the Fraunces Tavern Book Award) biography of one of democracy's greatest champions. Among friends and enemies alike, Paine earned a reputation as a notorious pamphleteer, one of the greatest political figures of his day, and the author of three best-selling books, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.Setting his compelling narrative against a vivid social backdrop of prerevolutionary America and the French Revolution, John Keane melds together the public and the shadowy private sides of Paine's life in a remarkable piece of scholarship. This is the definitive biography of a man whose life and work profoundly shaped the modern age.

Review:

'It is hard to imagine this magnificent biography ever being superceded . It is a stylish, splendidly erudite work The only book so far to do full justice to this near-nigh mythical figure' Terry Eagleton, Guardian 'A superb biography of an extraordinary man in extraordinary times' Daily Telegraph 'Not only a book of the year but a book of the decade - should finally consolidate Thomas Paine's reputation' Michael Foot, Evening Standard 'The most impressive and well-documented account ever written of this extraordinary man' Observer

About the Author:

Born in Australia, John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster and the WZB (Berlin) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Founder of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, a consultant to the United Nations and a recent member of the American-based Institutions of Democracy Commission, his books include Global Civil Society? (2004), Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (1999) and The Life and Death of Democracy.