Book Reviews

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BOOK REVIEW: Transoceanic Radical: William Duane

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2008 Number 2 Volume 9

Thomas Paine called himself a citizen of the world and as if to sustain this claim was an active revolutionary in Britain, France and America. If any one of his contemporaries deserves the title more it is William Duane.

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BOOK REVIEW: “Democracy? Not yet, perhaps never”

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2008 Number 3 Volume 9

This challenging book is printed in typescript of adequate size for those readers whose eyesight might be declining. Part one analyses the meaning of “democracy”, but the advice in print at the head of its ‘Table of Contents’ that ‘The US, England and France are not democracies’ – gives a due.

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An 1819 political cartoon titled “The Age of Reason or the World Turned Topsyturvy Exemplefied in Tom Paines Works!!” by Isaac Cruikshank. To a crucifix is tied a shaft, topped by a cap of Liberty, which supports a placard: ‘No Christianity!!!—No Religion!!!—No King!!!—No Lords! No Commons!—No Laws! Nothing but Tom Paine & Universal Suffrage!!!’ – © The Trustees of the British

BOOK REVIEW: Crisis Of Doubt, Honest Faith In Nineteenth-Century England

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2008 Number 2 Volume 9

Although this is not a book about Thomas Paine, it does bring out the extent of his influence amongst members of the freethought and Secularist movement in England during the 19th century, in particular the use by them of the arguments found in his Age of Reason.

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BOOK REVIEW: “My Pen And My Soul Have Ever Gone Together”

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2008 Number 2 Volume 9

One cannot do justice to this fascinating and I would say controversial work. Ms. Vickers in the space available, she rejects the charge that Paine’s work lacks originality and she is scathing about some of the comments made by several scholars critical of Paine.

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BOOK REVIEW: Gender, Religion And Radicalism In The Long Eighteenth Century

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2007 Number 4 Volume 8

That century with its agricultural and industrial revolutions, the Wesley and English Methodism, the sciences, the challenge of slavery, the French and American revolutions, Thomas Paine and other enlightened thinkers, but then the loss of the colonies – was not an easy stage on which a woman might make her case.

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BOOK REVIEW: Tom Paine, The Life of a Revolutionary. Harry Harmer

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2006 Number 3 Volume 8

Could this be the same Harry Harmer who was a South London contact for Republic in the 1980s? Why having written on Martin Luther King, the Labour party and slavery he chooses to write a biography of Paine when there are already enough of them to fill a small library?

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BOOK REVIEW: Freethinkers, A History Of American Secularism

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2006 Number 2 Volume 8

Although it may seem an exaggeration I nevertheless feel that books devoted to the history of secularism are sadly as rare as hens teeth, so it was something of a surprise when I read a mention in an American publication about the forthcoming publication of the work under review.

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BOOK REVIEW: Anarchist Ideas And Counter-Cultures In Britain, 1880-1914

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2005 Number 4 Volume 7

Because it advocated the franchise, Anarchists were critical of the Suffragette movement. However, it should be noted that Sylvia Pankhurst’s group which became the Workers’ Socialist Federation would share many of the Anarchists’ criticisms of the outcome of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Transatlantic Republican, Thomas Paine And The Age Of Revolutions

Thomas Paine Society UK, TPUK 2005 Number 4 Volume 7

This book was both stimulating and a pleasure to read for the author writes extremely well. Almost Painite in style, I am tempted to say. His essays are fully referenced with his notes being placed below the pages to which they apply rather than at the end of each essay.

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