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Tracing the life of one of the most highly regarded political figures of his generation, this work presents both the public and private sides of Paine's life. By the author of "The Media and Democracy". ... Read more

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Always Tom to admirers and enemies alike, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) is perhaps the most famous unknown figure of the American Revolution, ruthlessly expunged from the history of the birth of the United States while the nation was still young. When the prizes were given out, Paine was always somewhere else, forgotten, refused an invitation to the celebrations. But when the image has faded almost to invisibility, Paine is rediscovered, singing in his optimism, ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

Great Fun
This book is just great fun. It rambles and stumbles deliciously from one topic to another, including some esoterica, and at times loses focus on Paine.Does not have to be read straight through.(I skipped ahead to find out what happened to Paine's bones.)Refreshingly free of political bias and spin.Pedants, specialists, and political wingnuts on the left probably won't care for it.Wingnuts on the right will likely be indifferent.

Wonderful flashes of illumination on the 1800s
This is just superb, a completely entertaining book with some depth behind it. My wife loved it, and occasionally read me passages as she read it. I loved it, and kept mentioning passages to her as I read it.

Paul Collins is a wonderful writer. I thought John McPhee might be the best writer of nonfiction I've ever read, but Paul Collins is a worthy rival... with quite a different voice and approach. The book seems to be impeccably researched. But it's not really a history, it's a sort of travel volume or collection of anecdotes, in which Collins tells about his quest to determine what became of Tom Paine's body after Paine's death. The book shifts back and forth between his own experiences, and the various characters (in all senses of the word) who were touched by the travels of Tom Paine's remains. Paul Collins is himself a character in his own book, and frequently breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the reader. He has opinions and lets them show, but I think he does a careful and honest job of separating the facts from his reflections upon those facts (more so than, say, Tom Wolfe).

It has interesting flashes of illumination into the life of the 1800s, as Collins tries to get into the heads of the people he is writing about.

One of the most interesting parts to me was his comments on the role of phrenology in the 1800s. It is today regarded as such a quaint curiosity that I never fully realized the extent of its acceptance, and its connection with progressive thinking and social reform. It was, if you like, the psychoanalysis of its day. He points out something I'd half-noticed: the degree to which novelists of the period make a point of describing the shape of their characters' heads.

My high school is not far from New Rochelle and the next time I go to a reunion I am definitely going to make some time to visit the Tom Paine memorial.

Not just about Thomas Paine.....
To those reviewers who were disappointed because "this book was supposed to be about Thomas Paine," I would have to say that you missed the point.

This book is much more than just another bio of Thomas Paine.It's about his ideals, and the author brilliantly uses his bones to tell the story.He does a great job of weaving the story and connecting many of the brilliant minds who continued to fight for the principles espoused by Paine, and they did so long after he had already been villified by most Americans and British.

I loved this book, and I enjoyed reading about many of the people, such as Conway, who we rarely learn about.

If you want to read a biography of Thomas Paine, there are several available.If you want to read a book which makes you appreciate those people who have stood up for the ideals found in The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, then read this book.But don't forget to read the writings of Paine himself.

How to teach history!
Moncure Conway might have been the most fascinatingcharacter ever created for a historical fiction, for this book is both about him as well as Tom Paine. In fact, the book is almost incidentally about Tom Paine when he was alive. The focus is on Tom Paine, dead.
The book is well written, often very funny, and would be my textbook of choice if I were teaching high school or college history.
All-in-all, it's a book that is hard to put down!

Boooooring
The first section of the book is about Paine's final years and his body and what happened to it. Interesting stuff. This is what the blurbs in Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere said.

But then the author seems to get way too into all the connections between so-and-so and seems to really forget that he was writing about Thomas Paine. So so-and-so met Walt Whitman, and they both knew H.D. Thoreau, and Thoreau knew so-and-so...then all of a sudden, fast forward to this religious pacifist and a nutty pseudo-doctor and...

By page 130 I began thumbing through page after page looking for a mention of Paine. There's tons on the popularity of the toilet in the late 1800s, and on phrenology and on women's rights (ok ok, so the Paine tie-in there is that some early feminists used "Common Sense" as a springboard for other progressive ideals, including feminism and abolitionism, etc.).

Honestly, the majority of the book fails, in my mind, to remain interesting in relation to Paine. Extensive research into esoteric pseudo-science and the invention of the water closet may be interesting, but when I pick up a book about the strange afterlife and times of Thomas Paine, I expect there to be a bit more of a connection to Thomas Paine.

No? ... Read more

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The classic document that was spread among the colonies justifying the declaring of independence from England. ... Read more

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He's California surfer Cody "Cowboy" Carmichael, and his life is forever changed when he meets Private Tommy Trang at boot camp. Trang is not your typical American patriot--his mother was a Saigon prostitute, his father a dead U.S. marine, and Trang's heart soon belongs to a sixteen-year-old Kuwaiti princess trapped behind the lines when the Iraqis invade her country. Together, the two marines are ready to wave the American flag all the way to Baghdad, or at least into occupied Kuwait, to rescue Princess Lulu. During the exciting, moving, and often hilarious account of these two AWOL marines sneaking through the Iraqi lines, the mellow Carmichael gets to know the heart of Pvt. Tommy Trang, and discovers a new brand of patriotism that is gripping, contagious, and as deep as life itself.
A powerful first novel by an award-winning writer, The Pearl of Kuwait is Romeo and Juliet meets Lawrence of Arabia. Tom Paine has created an enthralling, joyful, and original story with the classic ingredients of love and war.
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Customer Reviews (7)

Like Dude this sucked!
If like you talk like a dude with a good vibe you may like this, but dude this is just too corny for me. The only realistic thing to me was how the two Americans stereotyped middle east culture and just acted generally obnoxious. The aspect of their being US Marines was played up in the heroic sense, but disregarded to tell this outrageous tale of adventure. I would hate to think there are military men, especially US Marine Corp would act so autonomously. This story was just too contrived for my taste. I read to the end thinking there might be some big resolution, the end was just as bad as the story.

an almost magical travel story
Wow, this book was great! The Los Angeles Times called it "a straight-ahead adventure tale in the vein of HUCKLEBERRY FINN" and they were so right. Trying to remember back to High School English and the terms for Mark Twain-style novels...pastoral, perhaps? Whatever it is, this book is a gem. I don't normally read novels about the Marine Corps, but this is SO much more than just the USMC in the 1st Gulf War (OOORAH!!). It's a lovely, slightly mythical narration of the adventures (or mis-adventures) of two unexpectedly AWOL marines. There's a Kuwaiti princess to rescue, a mythical pearl, camel racing, beduoins...it's a great travel yarn that has the war as an often distant backdrop. Made me think about patriotism, etc without ever really getting preachy. The narrative style is very innocent and genuine. Private Carmichael (formerly a stoner-surfer from CA) tells his story faithfully and openly. Very wonderful. I'm so glad I picked it up. I'd love to see this novel in an English class...lots of meaty things to sink ones teeth into. Also, I'm sure there's a lot of meanings behind the rock and roll lyrics that Carmichael thinks of throughout the story. Great fun!!

Fear and Loathing meets Catch-22
The book promises a rollicking adventure of story after story; it delivers with the whipcrack of hilarity reserved for a Tarantino movie.

The prose is based on attitude, not on literary style, and the surfer style speech is not so different from A Clockwork Orange in that you KNOW you are in a different world.Don't fault the story premise for a style of writing you may not be used to, and in fact, find annoying at times: the same way Chaucer wrote - he couldn't help it!

Rarely do I read a book and laugh out loud, but this one was a pleasure in that it was light and funny and had sexy Arab babes, daring adventures, macho stupidity, confusing culture clashes like KFC meets Felafel Bell but it is funnier than Hell.

The characters reminded me of T.C. Boyle's book Water Music, another underrated adventure story, in that they don't move, they bounce from place to place, like Kerouac on Ecstasy.

Dumb and Dumber in the Gulf War
Like, this is the story of jarhead Marine Cody Carmichael, a former stoner-surfer dude from Huntington Beach, his main man Tommy Trang, and their wild adventures in like Saudi and Kuwait both before and after the beginning of the Gulf War of 1991!They have a lot of really cool adventures, like, rescuing the babe Kuwaiti Princess Lulu, and going AWOL, and meeting a nasty oldSaudi colonel dude, and riding camels . . . it's so cool!They even almost get a chance to like, knock off Saddam!It doesn't quite work out but that's okay because they had like so many other cool adventures, and his main man the grinning Tommy Trang is like this amazing dude and they slap each other high fives a lot whenever anything totally, like, excellent happens!

The above is a pretty fair rendition of the prose style contained in this novel--which is told in the first person by Carmichael--and if you found your eyes glazing over by the end of the paragraph, imagine reading three hundred and ten pages of it.In case you missed the point, Carmichael is a moron.This pretty much ruins the novel, which is too bad, particularly since there's the outline of a pretty good story in here.

Yes, they do rescue a Kuwaiti Princess after she tries to drown herself in the Gulf.After the war begins, they go AWOL so that they can go to Kuwait to rescue her from the Iraqis.Along the way they meet many unusual Arabs, encounter bizarre customs, and have some truly remarkable adventures.Remarkable, unfortunately, to the point of almost being unbelievable, and almost unbelievable because the narrator, simple-minded as he is, is incapable of putting them in perspective.How nice it would have been for him to have had offered an explanatory note once in a while, or even to comment on how surprised HE was at some of these goings on.But nope, all we get is child-like, wide-eyed wonder, expressed in the voice of a buffoon.

Here are some examples of the profundities:" . . . Trang and me were discovering these Arab folk were way different from us Americans, and it was kind of a bummer."Wow."And it was so cool, and put me right into the ancient past with caravans and all, and I looked down at my own robe, and thought:Cool!Cool!Cool!"How revealing."Anyway, that song [American Band] kind of cracked me up, because we were sort of an American band, heading to the town of Kuwait, and maybe we would even get a chance to teach the locals to party American-style!"This is what passes for enlightenment.

It's a shame.Because there really is a good story in here trying to get out, and at least the hint of a theme as well, having to do with Americans imposing their values on other cultures.But as presented here, the story comes across as a Scooby-Doo cartoon, with the wit and intelligence to match.Don't believe the hype.Huckleberry Finn this ain't.

Destined to be a classic
Tom Paine's first novel is a picaresque tale of adventure set in the first Gulf War.Tommy Trang and Cody Carmichael are two Marine corps privates AWOL on a mission: to rescue a Kuwaiti princess (hence the title), assassinate Saddam, or die trying.The novel can be read on many levels:an adventure story, a romance, an inquiry into Arab culture, and an exploration of the warrior mentality that makes our armed forces tick. His humor reminds me of both Tom Wolfe and Tom Robbins.Many was the time I had to stop reading I was laughing so hard.There are a few scenes, such as the camel race in chapter two, that are destined to be classics.But this book is more than just a comedy; it has some moving insights into the conditions faced not only by our American soldiers, but also the plight of the Iraqi soldiers forced to fight for Saddam.The novel puts a human face on war, and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to better understand the dynamics of our current situation in the Arab world. ... Read more