8Thomas Paine was arguably the single most influential political writer during the American and French Revolutions. For this revised and updated edition the distinguished intellectual historian Bruce Kuklick brings together an expanded collection of the classic Paine texts--Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason--as well as the first of Paine's papers on The Crisis of 1776. A brief chronology, updated notes for further reading, and a succinct and lucid introduction to the principal themes of each text give further help to the student reader.