Penguin Classics: Common Sense

I recently learned that Meiji University has the English language Penguin Classics collection in their library for lending. So I will supplement some classic literature to my reading diet. At first I chose some slimmer volumes like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. I’ve been wanting to read something by this American radical for sometime and given his connection with America’s independence and the recent viewing of John Adams made it seem like the right time to visit it. There’s a comprehensive introduction by Isaac Kramnick that provides a lot of useful information and background details about Paine and the context from which this writing was produced. His radical sense of equality and anti-hereditary ideas seemed to have influenced the do-it-yourself frontier spirit or vice versa. I find it interesting to learn that John Adams was truly a conservative at heart and was distrustful of Paine. He is a man of reason, a secular humanist who felt that science and reason ought to reign, and therefore eminently admirable in my mind.