The Trouble with Tom by Paul Collins, Paperback, 9780747577683 | Buy online at The Nile
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The Trouble with Tom

The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine

Author: Paul Collins  

Paperback

An entertaining look at the life of one of the most famous and influential men - author of The Rights of Man - ever to have lived Widespread review coverage guaranteed for this accessible, enduring subject

A typical book about a major historical figure doesn't start at a gay piano bar and almost end in a drainage ditch. But then, Tom Paine wasn't a typical historical figure.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

An entertaining look at the life of one of the most famous and influential men - author of The Rights of Man - ever to have lived Widespread review coverage guaranteed for this accessible, enduring subject

A typical book about a major historical figure doesn't start at a gay piano bar and almost end in a drainage ditch. But then, Tom Paine wasn't a typical historical figure.

Read more

Description

The author of "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man", a radical on the run from the law in London, a founding father of the United States of America, a senator of revolutionary France, Thomas Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. He was a walking revolution in human form - the most dangerous man alive. But in death, Paine's story turns truly bizarre - his bones were taken from New York to London and eventually disappeared. In Paris, London and New York, in bars, grocers, shops and national libraries, crossing paths along the way with, among others, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, William Cobbett, Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin and even Lord Bryon, Paul Collins sets himself the challenge of finding out what happened to Paine's bones, and ends up telling one of the most extraordinary stories of modern history.

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Critic Reviews

“Praise for Paul Collins' Sixpence House 'Collins muses on antiquarian books the way the rest of us remember lost loves'”

Praise for Paul Collins' NOT EVEN WRONG' 'Few things are more heartbreaking than learning that your child is destined to be an outsider...Collins conveys this sad truth beautifully...[A] fascinating portrait of his son' Entertainment Weekly 'Collins elucidates, with great compassion, what it means to be "normal" and what it means to be human' Los Angeles Times 'A genre-bending spellbinder' Newsday Praise for Paul Collins' Sixpence House 'Collins muses on antiquarian books the way the rest of us remember lost loves' San Francisco Chronicle

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About the Author

Paul Collins is the author of Sixpence House and Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism. He edits the Collins Library for McSweeney's Books, and his work has appeared in New Scientist, the Village Voice, and Business 2.0.

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More on this Book

A typical book about an American founding father doesn't start at a gay piano bar and end in a sewage ditch. But then, Tom Paine isn't your typical founding father. The firebrand Common Sense rebel of 1776, a radical on the run from execution in London, and a senator of revolutionary France, Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. He was a walking revolution in human form - the most dangerous man alive. But in death Paine's story turns truly bizarre. Shunned as an infidel by every church, he had to be interred in an open field on a New York farm. Ten years later, a former enemy converting to Paine's cause dug up the bones and carried them back to Britain, where he planned to build a mausoleum in Paine's honour. But he never got around to it. So what happened to the body of this founding father'....Well, it got lost . Paine's missing bones, like saint relics, have been scattered for two centuries, and their travels are the trail of radical democracy itself. Paul Collins combines wry, present-day travelogue with an odyssey down the forgotten paths of history as he searches for the remains of Tom Paine and finds them hidden in, among other places, a Paris hotel, underneath a London tailor's stool, and inside a roadside statue in New York. Along the way he crosses paths with everyone from Walt Whitman and Charles Dickens to se reformers and hellfire ministers - not to mention a suicidal gunman, a Ferrari dealer, and berserk feral monkeys.....In the end, Collin's search for Paine's body instead finds the soul of democracy - for it is the story of how Paine's struggles have lived on through his eccentric and idealistic followers.

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Product Details

Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published
2nd January 2006
Edition
1st
Pages
288
ISBN
9780747577683

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