Citizen Tom Paine

Howard Fast

Dec 2011 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

The New York Times bestseller that’s “so glowingly human a picture of Tom Paine and America in the revolutionary days” (The New York Herald).
  Thomas Paine’s voice rang in the ears of eighteenth-century revolutionaries from America to France to England. He was friend to luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and William Wordsworth. His pamphlets extolling democracy sold in the millions. Yet he died a forgotten man, isolated by his rough manners, idealistic zeal, and unwillingness to compromise. Howard Fast’s brilliant portrait brings Paine to the fore as a legend of American history, and provides readers with a gripping narrative of modern democracy’s earliest days in America and Europe. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

Ratings and reviews

Tom Paine is the quintessential American anti-hero, and Howard Fast's furious and unsparing rendering of him and his contemporaries conveys the sprawling, disastrous mess that was the American Revolution far better than any conventional history, and the central part that Paine (and Washington) played in its endurance and eventual success.

About the author

DIVHoward Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.
/div