Publishers Weekly
Thomas Paine's critique of monarchy and introduction of the concept of human rights influenced both the French and the American revolutions, argues Vanity Faircontributor and bestselling author Hitchens (God Is Not Great) in this incisive addition to the Books That Changed the World series. Paine's ideas even influenced later independence movements among the Irish, Scots and Welsh. In this lucid assessment, Hitchens notes that in addition to Common Sense's influence on Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, Paine wrote in unadorned prose that ordinary people could understand. Hitchens reads Paine's rejection of the ministrations of clergy in his dying moments as an instance of his unyielding commitment to the cause of rights and reason. But Hitchens also takes Paine to task for appealing to an idealized state of nature, a rhetorical move that, Hitchens charges, posits either "a mythical past or an unattainable future" and, Hitchens avers, "disordered the radical tradition thereafter." Hitchens writes in characteristically energetic prose, and his aversion to religion is in evidence, too. Young Paine found his mother's Anglican orthodoxy noxious, Hitchens notes: "Freethinking has good reason to be grateful to Mrs Paine." (Sept.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Kirkus Reviews
O rare Tom Paine! Prolific political pundit Hitchens (God Is Not Great, 2007, etc.) sizes up the "self-taught corset-maker and bridge-designer" who fomented rebellion across the world two centuries ago. Paine's Rights of Man-the ostensible center of this entry in Atlantic's Books That Changed the World series-was, writes Hitchens, "both a trumpet of inspiration and a carefully wrought blueprint for a more rational and decent ordering of society," as well as "an attempt to marry the ideas of the American and French Revolutions" with the aim of introducing them to Britain. Of course, America and France found manifold ways to shake off revolutionary rationality, and Paine quickly found himself a prophet without honor, even if William Pitt allowed that Paine was of course right. (Pitt added, though, that to encourage Paine's opinions would be to invite revolution indeed.) Antimonarchical but at once radical and conservative-for instance, Paine "often wrote of economic inequalities as if they were natural or inevitable," and he resisted the atheism of the French Revolution-Rights of Man asserted a few contradictions and foreshadowed, in some ways, the notion of a dictatorship of the proletariat, but it also pressed for a certain wide-ranging species of liberty, against which Hitchens contrasts Edmund Burke, whose own ideas of equality and liberty turned on the presence of a hereditary king. Paine's vigorous and plain prose, Hitchens observes, has been taken as evidence of an uncouth nature, but Paine's ideas were elevated, and of course widely influential-reverberating, in time, in the labor movement, women's suffrage and Franklin Roosevelt's famous speech after Pearl Harbor. Paine, asHitchens notes in this lucid and fast-moving appreciation, has no proper memorial anywhere; this slender book makes a good start. Less exuberant than Tom Collins's essential book The Trouble with Tom (2005). Still, as with all Hitchens, well worth reading and arguing with.
From the Publisher
"Brilliant portrait.... An attractive introduction to Paine's life and work as a whole.... Hitchens remains a great writer, and a thinker of depth, range and vigour." ---Prospect
DEC 07/JAN 08 - AudioFile
Described as "an attempt to marry the ideas of the American and the French Revolutions . . . and to disseminate these ideas in Britain," THE RIGHTS OF MAN is one of the most influential books of political philosophy of the late eighteenth century. Christopher Hitchens, long an admirer of Paine's ideas and writings, looks at the context and content of this great work and its influence around the world. Simon Vance narrates with his usual dulcet tone, and his phlegmatic approach tends to smooth out Hitchens's inherent edginess. Those familiar with the way Hitchens speaks may find this book too tame for their taste, in spite of Vance's fine narration. K.M. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
