To fully appreciate the novelty of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, one must consider that all colonists had ever known was a dependency on England and a government run by the King. Now this 47-page pamphlet challenged them to consider separating from that powerful nation and replacing the King with something called a democracy.

The two most influential books of the Revolutionary era were written by Thomas Paine, an immigrant from England. Common Sense and The American Crisis shaped the American mindset like nothing else.