Tom Paine in Our Time: Common Sense at 250 with Joe Rezek

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was published in Philadelphia on January 9, 1776, and immediately became the best-selling book in American history. Paine used plain language to blast King George III as “the Royal Brute of Britain” and helped convinced the embattled thirteen colonies to unite and declare Independence. 250 years later, our nation is experiencing a remarkable Paine revival. He is one of the stars of the “No Kings” protests, with a line from Common Sense written on signs and placards: “In America, THE LAW IS KING!”. The Boston Athenaeum holds in its rare books collection George Washington’s copy of Common Sense. He received the pamphlet while stationed in Cambridge, MA, as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, with Boston was under British occupation. Washington credited Paine with convincing Americans that separation from Britain was the only appropriate response to the war that started on April 19, 1775. Inspired by Washington’s copy of Common Sense, and its arrival in Cambridge during the Siege of Boston, in this lecture Joe Rezek explored why it was so important in 1776 and why it still resonates so much today.

About the Speaker

Joseph Rezek is Associate Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Boston University. He is an internationally renowned scholar of early American literature, history, and print culture, and he recently published an essay about the 250th anniversary of Common Sense in The New York Times Book Review.