Thomas Paine's Rights of Man - (Books That Changed the World) by Christopher Hitchens (Paperback)

About the Book

Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted, but Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. In this book, he demonstrates how Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the U.S.

Book Synopsis

Christopher Hitchens, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great has been called a Tom Paine for our times, and in this addition to the Books that Changed the World Series, he vividly introduces Paine and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, the world's foremost defense of democracy. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defense of man's inalienable rights, and the key to his reputation. Ever since the day of publication in 1791, Declaration of the Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted, but in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. Famous as a polemicist and provocative commentator, Hitchens is a political descendent of the great pamphleteer. In this engaging work he demonstrates how Thomas Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the United States of America, and how "in a time when both rights and reason are under attack, the life and writing of Thomas Paine will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend."

Review Quotes

"A better case can be made for the claim that Thomas Paine's Rights of Man actually affected history than for other books so far published in the series, and Christopher Hitchens makes it with characteristic verve and style. An engaging account of Paine's life and times [that is] well worth reading"

"Hitchens is at his characteristically incisive best in writing of that champion of the oppressed, coadjutor of two revolutions, and eloquent proponent of the rights of man, Thomas Paine."