Among Howard Fast’s historical fiction, Citizen Tom Paine-one of America’s all-time best-sellers-occupies a special place, for it restored to a generation of readers the vision of Paine’s revolutionary passion as the authentic roots of our national beginnings. Fast gives us a vivid picture of Paine’s mode of writing, idiosyncrasies, and character-generous, nobly unselfish, moody, often dirty, frequently drunken, a revolutionist by avocation-Library Journal