Thomas Paine was one of the greatest advocates of freedom in history, and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burkeโs attack on the French Revolution, Paineโs text is a passionate defense of manโs inalienable rights. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted. But in Thomas Paineโs Rights of Man, the polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens, โat his characteristically incisive best,โ marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness (The Times, London). Hitchens is a political descendant of the great pamphleteer, โa Tom Paine for our troubled times.โ (The Independent, London) In this โengaging account of Paineโs life and times [that is] well worth readingโ he demonstrates how Paineโs book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the United States, and how, โin a time when both rights and reason are under attack,โ Thomas Paineโs life and writing โwill always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.โ (New Statesman)
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