Poor Tom Paine! There he lies; nobody laughs and nobody cries; where he has gone or how he fares; nobody knows and nobody cares. This 19th-century street ditty captures the obscurity of America's least known Founding Father. The author of Common Sense and other influential pamphlets helped spark the American Revolution and the upheaval in France, but earned no lasting fame. Indeed, history buff Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine (1737-1809) as "a dirty little atheist," and John Adams cast him off as "a disastrous meteor." Craig Nelson's major biography brings Paine alive in a new way. As Joseph J. Ellis noted, "This is the first book to recover him in his own electrical style...with all the flaws and foibles flaming away amidst the greatness."