Common Sense
Thomas Paine · 1776
Sold 100,000 copies in three months in a country of two million. Paine's plain-spoken argument for American independence (that monarchy is absurd and hereditary rule is an insult to reason) transformed colonists' grievances into revolutionary ideology. The most influential pamphlet ever written.
The case against
Propaganda, in the strict sense: Paine grounds his case in selective scripture (a long stretch on Samuel and the Israelites demanding a king) and in calling his opponents fools. His actual constitutional proposals, a single-chamber congress and little else, get a paragraph and would have failed. You read it to watch persuasion work, not to find an argument that holds.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
