Last month, we hosted a “What’s In Your Attic?” open house-style events where members of our community brought their own paper treasures (letters, journals, photographs, prints, books, and maps) for discussion with Clements Curators and guest Americana collectors. A handful of our guests generously chose to donate materials to the Clements Library at this event, here are a few of those newly donated acquisitions!
By the 1830s, American ballooning had reached its heyday. American aeronauts made technological improvements that allowed them to achieve higher and farther flights.
This exhibit examines the history of balloon flight in the United States from Blanchard’s first ascension to the early twentieth century.
Welcome to “A Day in the Life at The Clements Library!” On the fourth edition of this series, we will meet with Oksana Linda, the Rare Book Cataloger at the Clements Library!
Paine’s revolutionary temperament was not restricted to matters of politics. His 1794 book The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology extended his critique to theology and religion, questioning key tenets of the Christian faith, criticizing the institutional dimensions of religion more generally, and espousing Deism as the only faith compatible with human reason.
Fifteen years after the publication of Common Sense, Paine published the first part of his Rights of Man, a defense of the French Revolution. Rights of Man celebrated the French Revolution as heralding a new dawn of liberty and reason, and critiqued Edmund Burke’s 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France, which had criticized the French revolutionaries, defended traditional, established political norms and institutions, and endorsed gradual reform over wholescale political change.
This page offers a snapshot of the reactions and responses to Common Sense, and Paine more generally, that make clear how much controversy he and his work aroused. Both visually and textually, Paine was lionized and vilified as he became an icon synonymous with the ideas he advocated for.
In 2026, “going viral” refers to a piece of content spreading rapidly across the Internet and into common parlance, becoming a widespread sensation or defining a cultural moment. In 1776, Common Sense did just that – without the Internet.
