Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography (Books That Changed the World)

ISBN: 0871139553

Author: Hitchens, Christopher

Condition: New

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 Burkes attack on the French Revolution, Paines text is a passionate defense of mans inalienable rights. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted. But in Thomas Paines 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 Paines life and times [that is] well worth reading he demonstrates how Paines book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the United States, and how, in a time when both rights and reason are under attack, Thomas Paines life and writing will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend. (New Statesman)