Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261828 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages

Customer Reviews

Looking back at a crucial time for our democracy
Citizen Tom Paine was written by Howard Fast in 1943, at a time when we were fighting World War II, and badly needed to remember who we were, and what our values were. It did the job splendidly, and with great eloquence! We can use that sort of reminder once again - and that sort of integrity!

Tom Paine grew up in eighteenth century England as a member of the poorest class in London during a time when the poor were treated like throw-away items, to be killed, imprisoned or deported for very small infractions like stealing a loaf of bread. He was a tall, ugly man with a hook nose and crooked eyes.

Paine managed to scrape together fare for a boat trip to the new world, arriving at a time when the country was in great turmoil over whether or not to secede from England. Tom wrote a small book he called "Common Sense," which caught the imagination of the entire country and ended by selling hundreds of thousands of copies. In a very real sense, Paine's words made the revolution possible.

Friend of all the governmental leaders of the time, including Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and both Sam and John Adams, Paine never lost touch with the poorest of the common people, fought with the ragged Union army during the early, hopeless struggle of its beginnings, helped Washington finally to get food and supplies for his men at Valley Forge.

After the war Paine wrote a small book he called The Rights of Man, which became popular all over Europe as well as America, and helped to win supporters for the new American republic, and later, for the French Revolution.

Finally, he wrote a book called The Age of Reason, denouncing organized religions of all kinds as tyranny over the minds of men, saying that there should be no intermediaries between God and each man. In thus expressing his deeply-felt beliefs by the writing of this book, Paine suffered almost universal wrath and violent rejection by churchgoers everywhere, and died in illness, poverty and total obscurity.

Fast's account of Paine's life is in my mind his best book, and deserves to be read by all Americans who are lovers of freedom and who may have (or need) the courage to maintain individual beliefs not necessarily those of most people!

Tom Paine - a Founder for the Common Man
The Tom Paine who Howard Fast creates in his excellent historical novel Citizen Tom Paine is not a traditionally sympathetic character. He is a course peasant with a chip on his shoulder, full of self-pity, usually rash, and often drunk, dirty, and mean. Yet through all of that, a fierce, pure light shines, that makes him the most compelling of characters, and an unlikely inspiring hero. Fast writes of him, "in the unshaven, hook-nosed, wigless head, there was something both fierce and magnificent, a grinding savagery that might be sculptured as the whole meaning of revolution, unrest and cruelty combine with a deep-etched pattern of human suffering and understanding." This Paine is good only for revolution, a continually lonely wanderer, who says that the world is his village, and wherever freedom is not, there he will be. He is the prophet of the age of the common man, old "Common Sense". And in the end, despite all that he contributed to liberty and his fellow citizen of three nations, he is forsaken by all to die alone, and even his bones are given no rest.
Fast surrounds Paine with a great cast of historical personages - Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Burke, Blake, Marat, Robespierre, and Bonaparte among others - all men that Paine knew and moved among. They are all bit characters here, though. Whatever their worldly greatness, in Citizen Tom Paine they serve only to provide background to this great monolith of peasant philosopher revolutionary. Likewise, Fast convincingly shows us the world's first two great democratic revolutions, but only as they are viewed through the fierce eyes of Tom Paine. (This view is not entirely the one that you may have studied in school.) Everything else in this novel fades into the background as it keeps a tight focus on this amazing, sad man, who always had the courage of his convictions, no matter what price must be paid.
Paine is arguably the most neglected of America's founders. His frank writings on religion in his book The Age of Reason made him a pariah in his last days in America, and blackened his name here for over 100 years. Howard Fast has done an excellent job of rescuing Paine from that unfair obscurity, and presenting him as a complex, troubled, but fiercely honest hero for the common man. When I first read this book over twenty years ago, it gave me a new hero, and I have since read Paine's works and biographies, so I would say that Fast did his work well. Read it yourself to discover the brilliant character that Fast created, and then go out and discover the Tom Paine of history. Neither will disappoint you.

Theo Logos

Nothing beats a made up biography!
In Howard Fast's long and controversial career he has created (or at least perfected) the genre of the fictional historical novel. Like Michener, Fast puts fictional characters in position to shed new life on real events, with "Citizen Tom Paine," Fast does that very thing with, of all people, Tom Paine. Fast gives us a thorough look at the life of an important, but largely overlooked patriot. Set against the backdrop of America's turbulent beginnings, "Citizen Tom Paine" gives us front row access to the action. We assume most of the good parts aren't made up. But you know what happens when you assume. At it's very minimum, this book is a great read and really, what more is there?