Common Sense

1776年美国革命的爆发，其革命热情并非一朝一夕之功。自18世纪60年代初以来，大西洋两岸已出版数百本小册子，探讨英国对其北美殖民地的管辖权界限。然而，这些小册子大多出自受过良好教育的绅士之手，面向与他们一样受过良好教育的读者。
托马斯·潘恩的《常识》于1776年1月10日出版，却截然不同。它投掷到一场平静的辩论之中——其爆炸威力令绅士精英们震惊不已。潘恩四处寻找读者，尤其是在以酒馆和工匠为中心的城市世界。比作品的易读性更重要的是，潘恩的写作中饱含着一种愤怒和道德激情。他触及了当时许多普通民众——店主、商人、小商贩——内心深处的愤怒，这些人厌倦了被君主制、贵族制和等级森严的世界所轻视和蔑视。
《常识》成为整个革命时期具影响力的宣传册，仅在1776年就发行了25个版本，销量达15万册。本书由普利策奖得主、历史学家戈登·S·伍德作序，这部振奋人心的作品激励了一个渴望独立的国家和人民。
The incendiary political pamphlet that helped launch the American Revolution, introduced by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon S. Wood
The revolutionary fervor that sparked the American Revolution in 1776 had been a long time coming. Since the early 1760s, hundreds of pamphlets had been published on both sides of the Atlantic debating the limits of Great Britain’s authority over its North American colonies. Yet most of these were written by educated gentlemen for educated readers like themselves.
Common Sense by Thomas Paine, published on January 10, 1776, was entirely different. It was like a bomb thrown into the midst of a sedate debate—exploding with a force that stunned and alarmed the gentry elites. Paine sought readers everywhere, especially in the tavern- and artisan-centered worlds of the cities. Even more important than the work’s accessibility was the fact that Paine wrote with a rage and a moral fury that few before him had ever expressed. He tapped into a deep anger shared by many common, middling people in these years—shopkeepers, traders, petty merchants—people weary of being scorned and held in contempt by a monarchical, aristocratic, hierarchical world.
Common Sense became the most influential pamphlet in the entire Revolutionary era, going through twenty-five editions in 1776 alone and selling 150,000 copies. Introduced here by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon S. Wood, this is the singular, electrifying work that galvanized a nation—and a people—who were ready for independence.