| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. By Harvey J. Kaye. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. 326 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-8090-8970-X.)

This book is not primarily a biography. Rather, Harvey J. Kaye provides a detailed, decade-by-decade analysis of the legacy of Thomas Paine from the 1790s to the presidential election of 2004. Kaye believes that "elites and aspiring elites feared the power of Paine's pen and the radical implications of his arguments. In reaction, they and their heirs sought to disparage his character, suppress his memory, and limit the influence of his ideas" (p. 6). According to those elites, Paine's great sin "was to democratize ideas that had previously circulated only among the higher social ranks by making them understandable and accessible to laboring folk" (p. 84). Kaye asserts that during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conservatives succeeded in erasing "Paine's pivotal role in the making of the United States." Yet, the rest of the book seems to belie Kaye's own thesis. In fact, in his conclusions, Kaye explicitly states that such conservatives have repeatedly failed.

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