Craig Nelson

Thomas Paine:
Enlightenment, Revolution and the Birth of Modern Nations

Reading • Q&A • Signing

In this new biography of Thomas Paine, Craig Nelson has striven to create a rich and vivid portrait of a founding father who is perhaps the least well known – and the most controversial.

An integral figure in the Age of Enlightenment, Thomas Paine was the author of three bestsellers of the 18th century, including Common Sense, considered the cornerstone of American democracy. This biography delves deep into Paine's early years as a struggling London mechanic, then follows his immigration to America and his emergence as a crusading pamphleteer and a voice of revolutionary fervor in America and France. A founder of both the United States (he actually invented the phrase "United States of America") and the French Republic, he was at the center of these revolutionary times. He was able to miraculously escape execution during The Terror in Paris, but came back to America to live his final years in poverty and dementia.

Although his ideas continue to draw praise and criticism, the life and personality of this once lionized patriot have faded with time. Craig Nelson spent fiver years drawing on both the most recent scholarship and the archives of Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Paris, London, Lewes, and Thetford, to create a biography that restores this often misunderstood man to the stature that he deserves, revealing him to be as much a man of our time as a paragon of the Enlightenment.

"Thomas Paine has had many biographers, but this is the first book to recover him in his own electrical style. Nelson's account brings Paine to life with all the flaws and foibles flaming away amidst the greatness. The story is poignant and the prose is incandescent."
— Joseph J. Ellis, author, most recently, of His Excellency: George Washington

Craig Nelson is the author of four previous books, including The First Heroes and Let's Get Lost. His writings have appeared in Salon, The New England Review, Blender, Genre, and a host of other publications. He was an editor at HarperCollins, Hyperion, and Random House for almost twenty years and has been profiled by Variety, Interview , Manhattan , Inc., and Time Out.

Photo by Sigrid Estrada

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