Margo, Tom Paine was the author of Common Sense, the book that more than any other helped make the American Revolution a success. Also a book called "The Rights of Man".

It is arguable that without Common Sense the revolution may have failed. It begins, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." Tradition says that Tom Paine wrote it at night in camp, using a drumhead as his desk. The book was immediately and wildly popular, and set the public's mind alight with revolutionary fervor. The Continental Congress voted him a large land grant in thanks for his services to the revolution, but after the war was over conservative forces effectively prevented him from receiving his reward.

Bitter, he moved to France and tried to serve a similar function with the French revolution. His "big" book at that time was The Rights of Man", was not nearly as well-received by the French, but is philosophically broader and meatier than Common Sense. Perhaps because of his outspoken atheism, his books have at times been suppressed--especially in England, because much of what he said in The Rights of Man clearly had England as a revolutionary target.

Dave Oesterreich