David Freeman Hawke's biography of Thomas Paine is reissued here in paperback. Hawke describes a life of incredible diversity, from Paine's humble beginnings as a corset maker in England, through the dramatic roles he played in the American and French Revolutions, his friendships with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, his imprisonment in France during the Terror, his trial and banishment from England for publishing "The Rights of Man", and the pathos of his declining years. Paine emerges from this book as a complex, flawed man, temperamental and jealous of his reputation, but also scholarly, gentle and affectionate.