"A culminating work on the American Founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the 'American Revolution': former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams...

The publication of Thomas Paine's incendiary pamphlet, Common Sense, in January of 1776 proved the tipping point for America's Revolutionary War. This edition features the full text of Thomas Paine's pamphlet, a scholarly Foreword on the social and political significance of the tract, and a Chronology of Thomas Paine's Life.