John Keane guest of ABC Radio National Summer Wednesday 26 July 2006, 6pm Thomas Paine English-American writer and revolutionary Thomas Paine had a profound influence on the French revolution, the American Revolution and English radicalism. And his ideas shaped the way all of us understand the concept of rights, democracy, the welfare state, and the concept of United States. Presenter: Phillip Adams Other Guests: Christopher Hitchens (Writer, polemicist).   Download the MP3 Recording of this show: Audio file here File Size: 75 MB - Lenght: 53 Minutes   John Keane Tom Paine - A Political Life (1996) “More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world.” So begins John Keane's magnificent and award-winning biography of “democracy's greatest propagandist” (Library Journal). The author of the incomparable Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason, Paine earned his reputation as a notorious Revolutionary pamphleteer only to become one of the most extraordinary figures of his day. Setting his thrilling narrative against both the American and French Revolutions, Keane splendidly melds the public and private sides of Paine's life into a remarkable piece of scholarship... (Read More) . . . .