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Rating: 
Summary: A book for all times
Review: As I read this book, I couldn't help but think, where is the Tom Paine of our time? The insights that Tom Paine had are needed today more than ever.
Rating:
Summary: Yankee Doodle, the quintessence, a dandy
Review: Crackerjack biography of Old Tom (Paine) in the four stages of his life, from his early years in England til Ben Franklin advises him to reach America, the period of _Common Sense_ and the American Revolt, then the _Rights of Man_ and the French Revolution, and finally his return to America, where the reputation of the _Age of Reason_ caught up with him, and his great early popularity was replaced with the jibes of those in a suddenly religious republic, whose liberties were won by more secular sorts (cf. Gordon Wood's book on the Revolution, such as Paine. It is a sad ending to a magnificent tale for a true champion of freedom, one who brought the democratic idea to a republican experiment in constitutions. The phenomenal nature of the sales of his books, whose profits he renounced in the name of his cause, is an episode almost world-historical in its seminal influence. Paine's trek is also a classic snapshot of the 'classic' liberal in his revolutionary phase, and the subtleties of great tomes politcal philosophy seem prefigured in the sheer horse-sense of this man who saw the gist of it all, and somehow at a glance. Witness his instinctive in the spectral course of the French Revolution from the Girondins to the Terror to the dungeons, which he survived. It may finally be that his reputation has recovered at last its nineteenth century shadows where the truest of patriots was consigned.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong biography of a decidedly modern revolutionary.
Review: I will admit that I was not immediately enamored with this book. The luciferous introduction on Keane's predecessors in Paineite biography was engaging enough, but I found his systematic, nit-picky demolition of each work to be just plain egotistical. In Keane's eyes, each previous biography "failed" or "floundered" for various reasons, thereby opening a window for his own, earth-shattering tome on the subject. Granted, it has become common practice for authors to "justify" their reasons for writing "yet another biography on _______" in the preface of their books, but this sort of self-serving, hypercritical overview left me with a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I seriously worried that the 540 pages that followed would be tinctured with the same sort of pomposity - thankfully that was not the case.
The book is a solid biography, and I can very well see Paine enthusiasts flocking to this as one of the best biographies ever written about him. As this is the only biography of him I've read, I'll reserve my judgment on that question, but I will admit that it is an exceptional study of a peculiar man. What the general public knows of Paine is often just his authorship of Common Sense, but of course there was so much more. He penned not one but three of the best-selling books of the 18th century, and, arguably, he initiated modern political thought on the subject of democratic republicanism. Paine was born an Englishman but for most of his life considered himself a "citizen of the world," which prompted a major change in how we view national citizenship - no so much as a gift from the state, as was the 18th century perception, but rather a promise from it to preserve certain rights indigenous to its people. Yet despite his cosmopolitan leanings, Paine managed to ostracize himself from all three countries in which he declared citizenship - England, France and America - thanks to his revolutionary ideals and his fervent insistence on airing his views publicly regardless of their popularity. He would eventually face public execution in both England and France - the story of his brush with death in La Luxembourg prison during the French Reign of Terror is decidedly spine-tingling - but would survive both to end up back in America, ostracized by the generation that remembered him, and nearly forgotten by the generation that followed.
Keane doesn't devolve into hero-worship, despite several initially-worrisome hyperbolic descriptions of him as "the greatest American revolutionary." Instead, the author deals with each of Paine's failings in a forthright manner. Paine was certainly a man driven by ego, though certainly an ego unaffected by cares for money, power, or public approbation. To put it simply, he just knew he was right, and he would never back down from any of his arguments, regardless of their popularity. Even his most unpopular anti-Christian sentiments displayed in the Age of Reason could not be moved, despite the efforts of many to make him recant on his deathbed. As for Paine's legendary alcoholism, Keane suggests it was just that - a legend. According to Keane, Paine never drank to excess when in social situations. He only drank himself into stupors later on in life when the pain of gout and bedsores became unbearable. This may or may not have been the case - I lean towards may not - but in the end it is of comparatively little importance when calculating the worth of a man whose ideas have arguably shaped many of our own modern ideas on government and civil rights.
All told, the biography earns four stars from me on a scale of five. The rating falls short of the final star more because of style than substance. Keane's prose is certainly readable, and in most cases enjoyable, but it was a bit dry and academic for my tastes in several places. On top of that there was some strange editorial snafus, including several instances of sloppy repetition and an imprecise policy of when and when not to translate from the original French. In one chapter Keane includes an entire paragraph of French extracted from a letter (p. 405), with no accompanying translation, and yet in the next he feels it necessary to include a parenthetical translation of the decidedly uncomplicated Dissertations sur les Premiers Principes de Gouvernement as, surprisingly, or not, "Dissertations on the First Principles of Government" (p. 423).
Regardless of my editorial trifles, the book is strong and well recommended to anyone interested in picking up a book on the life and works of Tom Paine. You'll find his life, in many respects, reads like an adventure novel, and his ideas on government and society are surprisingly, shockingly, modern.
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