?[A] quixotic, mischievous and often hilarious work?Part travelogue, part memoir and part historical mystery, this book reads like a wry, witty novel and offers a delicious twist at the end.??Publishers Weekly

Paul Collins takes us on a strange odyssey down the forgotten roads of history as he hunts for the bones of Tom Paine?exhumed and then lost, and now scattered around the globe. Crossing the paths of everyone from Walt Whitman and Charles Darwin to sex reformers and feral monkeys, this colorful search for a founding father?s body simultaneously excavates the very soul of democracy.