The brilliance and fire of Tom Paine's pamphleteering inspired and sustained the Americans in their revolutionary war to strike off the shackles of colonial rule and in their later efforts to forge a new society. COMMON SENSE (published January 1776) and THE AMERICAN CRISIS (a series of pamphlets running from 1776 to 1783) not only crystallized public opinion for the conflict and stiffened the soldier's morale but provided the blueprint for the government of free men for which the war was fought and won.
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.