Christopher Hitchens' "Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man"

I had high hopes for this book, but Hitchens didn't deliver. Too often a Hitchens book comes across as dense and didactic. This is one of those.

I was hoping for a lively discussion of Thomas Paine, his life, his writings, and his impact on political thinking. This book was pretty dreary. There were three chapters devoted to his main writings The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. But I didn't learn much that I felt was useful. There was the odd bit that was interesting, but Hitchens didn't do what an expositor needs to do: make it lively and make it relevant so that the reader catches the excitement about the historical character and his writing.