Today is Independence Day in the United States. Much of the inspiration for the American Revolution and eventual structure for the new country came from a book, Common Sense by Thomas Paine, first published January 10, 1776. It is the best selling book in the history of the United States, other than the Bible.
Certainly there were rumblings of rebellion before the book was published, but as is true with most books, which make waves through a society, they often put into words what many people had already been thinking.
At just under 22,000 words, it is rather short, but it gave voice to a revolution, which has been celebrated for the last 241 years.
Brevity is not always a bad thing. In fact, some of the most powerful and formative speaking and writing in the history of the United States contained relatively few words.
Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was about 1,600 words.
The Declaration of Independence is just over 1,300 words.
The Emancipation Proclamation had 625 and The Gettysburg Address came in at 272 words.
(The current United States Federal Tax Code is about four million words…but I digress.)
Some of the more poignant and well-known quotes from Common Sense are:
“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer…”
“When I was teaching children I began every day writing this on the blackboard: “Do to others what you would like them to do to you”, telling them how much better the world would be if everybody lived by this rule.”
Over the centuries, since the invention of the printing press, books have entertained, informed, inflamed and also inspired readers to action.
The Bible, written by a variety of men under the inspiration of the creator God has transformed the world and is the greatest book ever written.
Other books sparked political movements, changes in society, science, education and religion, and some were even the explosive charge at the center of destruction, death and misery.
Some examples of revolutionary books are:
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriett Beecher Stowe
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
…and many, many more which profoundly affected our world. Books can be powerful catalysts.
Every nation has its own unique list of books, which were critical to their establishment and influential for either their improvement or destruction.
The Christian world has its own list of books which define it. In 2006, Christianity Today Magazine attempted to come up with the fifty most influential books for Evangelicals. Here is the list.
Of course, even this list could be disputed based on a person’s background, denominational identification, age, preference in reading styles and the greatest difference, what language they speak or the country where they reside. Everyone who reads has a personal list of most important books.
Books need at least a generation or longer to be proven as groundbreaking. There might be a few books which have been published in the last twenty years or so which will make a “most important book” list of the future, but most likely it will be one, maybe two at most from this generation.
Only time will tell.
Lists of truly important books change slowly. In fact, a true revolutionary book will rarely give up its spot on a list without a fight.
