Book Description
One of Paine’s greatest and most widely read works, considered a classic statement of faith in democracy and egalitarianism, defends the early events of the French Revolution, supports social security for workers, public employment for those in need of work, abolition of laws limiting wages, and other social reforms. An inspiring book that paved the way for the growth and development of democratic traditions in American and British society.



Download Description
No individual's writing better exemplifies this transformation of the language of social and political change than that of Thomas Paine (1737-1809). And no individual has a better claim to be the world's first international revolutionary. His writings bear witness to his revolutionary activities, and provide us with a detailed picture of the evolving understanding of social and political change at the end of the eighteenth century.


From the Publisher
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ANNOTATION

History has come to regard him as the figure who gave political cogency to the liberating ideas of the Enlightenment, and his great pamphlets, Common Sense and Rights of Man, are seen as classic arguments in defense of the individual's right to assert his or her freedom in the face of tyranny.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Rights of Man presents an impassioned defense of the Enlightenment principles of freedom and equality that Thomas Paine believed would soon sweep the world. He boldly claimed, "From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen, not to be extinguished. Without consuming ... it winds its progress from nation to nation." Though many more sophisticated thinkers argued for the same principles and many people died in the attempt to realize them, no one was better able than Paine to articulate them in a way which fired the hopes and dreams of the common man and actually stirred him to revolutionary political action.