Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published on January 10, 1776, sold more than 100,000 copies by March of the same year.15 In 1985, a book would have to sell eight million copies (in two months) to match the proportion of the population Paine’s book attracted. If we go beyond March, 1776, a more awesome set of figures is given by Howard Fast: “No one knows just how many copies were actually printed. The most conservative sources place the figure at something over 300,000 copies. Others place it just under half a million. Taking a figure of 400,000 in a population of 3,000,000, a book published
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Early americans treated Paine;'s work with the same regard we treat the superbowl. A wild pubic discourse.
