Dos Passos relishes the opportunity to expound on one of his heroes in this book. He believes, according to biographer Townsend Ludington, that he shares some career traits with Paine.

“He was to go on,” Dos Passos writes in the introduction to The Living Thoughts of Tom Paine, “with complete disregard of the consequences to himself, fervently explaining his doctrines and checking them with complete candor to meet transforming events. He had the best nose of any man who ever lived for the political happenings of the moment.”