The Trouble with Tom
The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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...
'A genre-bending spellbinder' Newsday
'Collins elucidates, with great compassion, what it means to be "normal" and what it means to be human' LA Times
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These are the times that try men's... bones? In this quixotic, mischievous and often hilarious work, Collins (Sixpence House) traces the bizarre story of Thomas Paine's remains through nearly two centuries of American and English history. After Paine's death in 1809, the iconoclastic reformer was refused burial in any Christian cemetery and was laid to rest ignominiously on his New York farm with only six people in attendance. Ten years later, a follower exhumed the remains and took them to England, where they were passed about for decades while various individuals harvested this or that relic for their private collections. More than a history of Paine's body, Collins offers an entertaining and compelling investigation of his legacy; Paine's example continued to animate all kinds of reformers throughout the 19th century, from feminists and spiritualists to phrenologists and physicians. Indeed, Paine's artifacts had a kind of Forrest Gump quality, bumping into many of the celebrated causes, writers and agitators of the day. Part travelogue, part memoir and part historical mystery, this book reads like a wry, witty novel and offers a delicious twist at the end.
