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 Burke’s attack on the French
Revolution, Paine’s text is a passionate defense of man’s
inalienable rights. Since its publication, Rights of Man has
been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and
co-opted. But in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, the
polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens, “at his
characteristically incisive best,” marvels at its
forethought and revels in its contentiousness (The Times,
London). Hitchens is a political descendant of the great
pamphleteer, “a Tom Paine for our troubled times.” (The
Independent, London) In this “engaging account of Paine’s
life and times [that is] well worth reading” he demonstrates
how Paine’s book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the
United States, and how, “in a time when both rights and
reason are under attack,” Thomas Paine’s life and writing
“will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need
to depend.” (New Statesman)
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