by Thomas Paine
First published 2019
Thomas Paine opens his response to Edmund Burke's inflammatory pamphlet with calculated precision. Burke has launched an unprovoked assault on the French people and their National Assembly, filling nearly four hundred pages with every insult the English language offers. Paine watches this display of rancour and prejudice with growing indignation. Neither France nor its representatives had interfered in English affairs, yet Burke chose to attack them both in Parliament and in public writings. Paine sees through Burke's passionate fury to something deeper. When someone writes or speaks in such frenzy, Paine realizes, they reveal more about themselves than their supposed subject. Burke could have written thousands more pages in the same vein, but his exhaustion comes from within, not from any lack of material to criticize. Paine prepares to defend the rights of man against Burke's misguided assault on revolutionary principles.
Genres: history, 20th-century, political-science, non-fiction, 19th-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers
Setting: France, England
Period: 18th-century
261 pages · Paperback · Independently published