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Mark Twain's America: A Celebration in Words and Images
Mark Twain is an American icon. We now know him as the author of classics, but in his day he was a controversial satirist and public figure who traveled the world and healed post-Civil War America with his tall tales, witty anecdotes, and humorous but insightful novels and stories. Twain's legacy continues to flourish over 100 years after his death.
Mark Twain's America features spectacular examples of Twain memorabilia and period Americana from the unsurpassed collections of the Library of rare illustrations, vintage photographs, popular and fine prints, period views, caricatures, cartoons, maps, and more. Excerpts from Twain's writings are framed in a lively narrative by author Harry L. Katz.
Covering the years between 1850 and 1910, the book gives readers an intimate view of Twain's many roles in Mississippi river boat pilot, California gold prospector, "printer's devil" at a small-town newspaper, muckraking journalist, novelist, public speaker extraordinaire, our first major celebrity author. Through letters, political cartoons, photographs and more, Mark Twain's America offers an inside look into Twain's life as well as the literary. social, and political life of America during his time.
Mark Twain's America features spectacular examples of Twain memorabilia and period Americana from the unsurpassed collections of the Library of rare illustrations, vintage photographs, popular and fine prints, period views, caricatures, cartoons, maps, and more. Excerpts from Twain's writings are framed in a lively narrative by author Harry L. Katz.
Covering the years between 1850 and 1910, the book gives readers an intimate view of Twain's many roles in Mississippi river boat pilot, California gold prospector, "printer's devil" at a small-town newspaper, muckraking journalist, novelist, public speaker extraordinaire, our first major celebrity author. Through letters, political cartoons, photographs and more, Mark Twain's America offers an inside look into Twain's life as well as the literary. social, and political life of America during his time.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 21, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 23, 2015
BEWARE! This book is not what it seems. It's a beautiful-to-look-at book, published by a major publisher and co-authored by the Library of Congress; it has a selected bibliography full of respected publications on the subject. I'm a librarian in a rather Twain-obsessed town; until someone pointed out the problems with this book, I would have confidently pulled this off the shelf for a casual reader interested in Twain, or a high-school student working on a paper. However, on closer inspection, it is full of sloppy errors which make this book completely unreliable. Two examples: the book claims that visitors to the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 would have enjoyed cotton candy; this is unlikely, as cotton candy wasn't invented until 4 years after the Fair. Also, at one point the book states that Huck Finn and Jim paddle UPriver in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"; anyone who's read Huck Finn probably recalls they floated downriver, and that much of the point of the book is that the two are traveling through the South. The book is riddled with errors like this, many of which were pointed out by Twain scholar and reviewer Kevin MacDonnell; please look up his review on the Mark Twain Forum. In addition to all the made-up material, the chronologies in the book were clearly plagiarized from "Mark Twain A-Z" (MacDonnell pointed this out in his review, and I can attest to it after comparing the two books myself).
Once you look past the inaccuracy and the plagiarism, what's left of this book is quite superficial; I'm not a Twain scholar and have only an amateur's interest in US history, but I didn't learn much new from this book and easily caught several mistakes without referring to Google. I did enjoy many of the images in the book (though I'm told their captions are often incorrect), and almost wish this book had been created as a photo essay rather than as a half-hearted attempt at an informative text. I finished reading this a week ago, and am still completely flabbergasted that the Library of Congress affixed its name to this book (they have since issued an apology for the errors, but still). If you genuinely enjoyed "find the incorrect statement" questions on tests in school, or are the sort of person who reads the newspaper with a red pen in hand, then this is the perfect book for you. For everyone else, there are many, many better books about Mark Twain out there.
Once you look past the inaccuracy and the plagiarism, what's left of this book is quite superficial; I'm not a Twain scholar and have only an amateur's interest in US history, but I didn't learn much new from this book and easily caught several mistakes without referring to Google. I did enjoy many of the images in the book (though I'm told their captions are often incorrect), and almost wish this book had been created as a photo essay rather than as a half-hearted attempt at an informative text. I finished reading this a week ago, and am still completely flabbergasted that the Library of Congress affixed its name to this book (they have since issued an apology for the errors, but still). If you genuinely enjoyed "find the incorrect statement" questions on tests in school, or are the sort of person who reads the newspaper with a red pen in hand, then this is the perfect book for you. For everyone else, there are many, many better books about Mark Twain out there.
September 20, 2018
Having read other reviews I understand that this book has a number of factual errors in it. I still found the text fascinating as I am a great fan of Mark Twain. I also greatly enjoyed the many pictures contained in the book, though I recommend finding a magnifying glass before you start reading as their is a great deal of very small interesting detail in many of the pictures. I thought the book somewhat diminished for a casual reader such as myself by the inclusion of not one but two chronologies, the second of which is quite lengthy.
July 24, 2019
This was a very inspiring, humorous to me at times, book that's
well written!!
well written!!
February 11, 2020
Well, it does provide a really interesting picture of what was going on when Clemens was writing. Like expanding the frame of a photo out to show the stuff surrounding the image, it's sometimes surprising, and sometimes gives important context to the image itself. That said, it's kind of a mess, hopping around from social issues to scientific discoveries to economic and other historical bits. It's sort of a stew of (one gathers) whatever struck the author as interesting at the time.
March 8, 2015
A very interesting book - mostly of pictures America during the life of Mark Twain - 1835-1910.
It is also a biography, but no new revelations.
The bio is integrated with the pictures from the Library of Congress.
A terrific panorama of America.
Most unique is a 50 page Timeline at the end of the book. For every year of Twain's life, the author lists the major political events, and the births and deaths of prominent figures of the day.
For example, in 1835, the year of Twain's birth, both de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales were published.
In 1910, the year of Twain's death, Florence Nightingale died, The Union of South Africa was formed, and the Boy Scouts of America were founded.
It is also a biography, but no new revelations.
The bio is integrated with the pictures from the Library of Congress.
A terrific panorama of America.
Most unique is a 50 page Timeline at the end of the book. For every year of Twain's life, the author lists the major political events, and the births and deaths of prominent figures of the day.
For example, in 1835, the year of Twain's birth, both de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales were published.
In 1910, the year of Twain's death, Florence Nightingale died, The Union of South Africa was formed, and the Boy Scouts of America were founded.
April 17, 2015
great combo of biography and visual history!
July 28, 2016
Do not recommend this book unless you love to enjoy old photos. The text is dry and repetitive. Just not a well written book. The history through the photos was enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews