Reviews for The Thomas Paine Reader

The average rating for The Thomas Paine Reader based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-20 00:00:00 Michele Hanna I reread chapter 5 Part II in which he throws out lots of ideas, many ahead of his time (in no particular order): universal civilization, mutual benefits of free trade, progressive taxes, war as a political distraction, provisions for the aged, universal education, anti-slavery, wastefulness of colonies and the wars which keep them, demilitarization, and much else. I don't agree with all of these, but his arguments should still be a great inspiration to contemporary leaders. He also gets his hands dirty with some fiscal math which, whether correct or not, is sometimes nice to see instead of pure abstract reasoning.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-09-28 00:00:00 Ramiro Perez Del Castillo "It contains all of Paine's key works including 'The Rights of Man', his groundbreaking defence of the revolutionary cause in France, 'Common Sense', which won thousands over to the side of the American rebels, and the first part of 'The Age of Reason', a ferocious attack on Christianity." No, it doesn't. It has some of The American Crisis, some of the Age of Reason, and some of the Rights of Man. The editorial decisions that went into this are incomprehensible. The Library of America has a collected works that doesn't have mere selections chosen by editors with apparently no sense at all.