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Lucas and Luke review Thomas Paine’s unique contributions to the American Revolutionary period, from Common Sense and Rights of Man to the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution, one of the most democratic constitutions of its era. To learn more about Paine, we recommend: Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); E.P. Thomspon, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Random House, 1964); Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1876-87 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Harvey Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006); John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (New York: Little Brown & Co., 1995); Jonathan Israel, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Sean Monahan, “Reading Paine From the Left,” Jacobin, March 6, 2015, https://jacobin.com/2015/03/thomas-paine-american-revolution-common-sense/
The Democratic Constitution Podcast: Thomas Paine and the Democratic Republic