The Annotated Common Sense

The pamphlet that helped launch a Republic may be its best hope to save it. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published forty-seven pages that turned the question of independence from a whispered possibility into an unavoidable demand. Common Sense sold 500,000 copies in a nation of two and a half million and gave ordinary citizens the language to claim self-governance as their birthright. It was the most dangerous book in the British Empire. It worked. Now, for America's 250th anniversary, the Spirit of Thomas Paine has returned to annotate his own work. Every section of the original 1776 text is preserved in full. Running alongside it, Paine's new commentary holds the original arguments against the light of two and a half centuries: what he meant then, what it means now, and what has gone sideways in between. This is not a museum piece. It is a living argument between the man who lit the fuse and the world that has yet to finish what he started. The disease Paine diagnosed in 1776, concentrated power justified by tradition and enforced by violence, has not been cured. It has mutated. It no longer wears a crown, but the machinery is the same, and Paine recognizes every part of it. The Annotated Common Sense is the first volume in the Common Sense Trilogy from 76 Spirits. The companion volumes are Common Decency and Common Sense, NOW! All three are available at 76spirits.com. Read it. Argue with it. Pass it along. That is what pamphlets are for.