This vivid, insightful account gives Paine his due, but he remains an outlier to our founders.
A fine biography of one of America’s greatest polemicists.
Thomas Paine (1736-1809) was a poor, self-educated craftsman and writer born in Britain, writes prolific historian Unger (Doctor Benjamin Rush: The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation, 2018, etc.), former distinguished fellow at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Paine arrived in America in 1774 with letters of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin and found a job as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. When his pamphlet Common Sense appeared in January 1776 as the Revolution was underway, it went viral, perhaps “the greatest publishing success of the 18th century and, in many ways, the most important publishing event since Martin Luther’s 95 Theses that provoked the Reformation.” Unlike typical prolix 18th-century writing, it’s an easy read even today, and its fiery denunciation of Britain made Paine, Unger maintains, the second most popular Revolutionary figure. Americans also devoured The American Crisis, 16 inspirational pamphlets published between 1776 and 1783. Thrilled with the French Revolution, Paine also wrote Rights of Man, another fierce polemic that delighted American supporters of the Revolution (the Democrats) but not those opposed (Federalists). Traveling to France, he fell afoul of Robespierre; imprisoned in 1793, he barely escaped the guillotine. In prison, he began writing The Age of Reason, which praised Jesus’ teaching but criticized organized religions and described the Bible as a collection of myths. Educated Enlightenment figures such as Jefferson and Franklin held similar beliefs, but unlike other religious writing, Paine’s prose was crystal-clear and his book cheap. The masses snapped it up and were outraged. Reviled for atheism and shunned by the establishment, he died in obscurity, from which he is only now emerging. Historians, Unger included, now consider Paine as central to the Revolution as Washington and Jefferson, but The Age of Reason killed his chance of entering semidivinity as a Founding Father in the popular mind.
This vivid, insightful account gives Paine his due, but he remains an outlier to our founders.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-306-92193-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
