The Age Of Paine

by Zoe Pollock

Commonweal's Cathleen Kaveny tracks early American snark. Here's John Adams' comment on the title of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason:

I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity, asyou do, and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice,Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Bonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the BurningBrand from the Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason. I know notwhether any man in the world has had more influence on its...