Reviews

Radical journalist Thomas Paine (1737-1809), whose pamphlet Common Sense (1776) steeled American colonists to break with England, was a revolutionary, a statesman, an outspoken opponent of slavery and an advocate of democracy. He fought for constitutional safeguards to protect the unemployed and the working poor, for free public education, old-age benefits and public assistance. Born in England, Paine moved to Philadelphia in 1774, later shuttling between England, France and America. A moderate delegate to France's National Convention, he was imprisoned amid the Reign of Terror; and although Robespierre ordered his execution, Paine was released after 10 months. Disillusioned, poor and frustrated he turned to drink, Freemasonry and spiritualism. In Paris in 1797, he founded the Theophilanthropists, a humanistic ethical society seeking global moral renewal. Resettling in the U.S. in 1802, Paine feuded bitterly with Federalists who scorned him and his Jeffersonian friends. Political science professor Fruchtman (Towson State Univ., Md.) has written a spirited, riveting biography that cogently argues that Paine was a pantheist who saw God's handiwork in all nature and in humanity's struggles to improve the common good. Illustrated. (Oct.)

With new insights into Paine's troubled, if triumphant, life comes new understanding of his writings, those seeds of our revolution. One can't read this long-overdue, revealing, and moving biography without feeling both the admiration and the same frustrations Fruchtman (Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, Johns Hopkins, 1993) did, coming away angered that "the problems...tragically remain today." The role of the true revolutionary is exposed, and Fruchtman's study succeeds better than most in giving us deeper understanding of that lonesome role and its purpose. We haven't yet come even half way as a society to meet Paine's vision. In the whole work, and especially in his last chapter, "Assessment," Fruchtman comes very near to that indistinct line between biographer and champion. His solid work corrects earlier lies about Paine, and if he slips into exhortation, it is only because no one could know Paine so well and not be so affected. Paine's spirit lives, restrained only by scholarly discipline, making for a highly readable, highly recommended work.-John Berry, "Library Journal"