Mark Twain (born Samuel Clemens), a former printer's apprentice, journalist, steamboat pilot, and miner, remains to this day one of the most enduring and beloved of America's great writers. Combining cultural criticism with historical scholarship, A Historical Guide to Mark Twain addresses a wide range of topics relevant to Twain's work, including religion, commerce, race, gender, social class, and imperialism. Like all of the Historical Guides to American Authors, this volume includes an introduction, a brief biography, a bibliographic essay, and an illustrated chronology of the author's life and times.
Mark Twain is still one of the most enduring and beloved of America's great writers. In this guide to Twain, his life and times and the historical context in which he operated Shelley Fisher Fishkin assembles original essays by leading scholars that describe and define the man.
The Mark Twain U.S. History: People and Events 1607–1865 social studies book highlights the decisions and events that have played an important part in shaping America during that time. This middle school history book includes profiles of the people who made those decisions and a timeline of events. U.S. History: People and Events takes your students on a journey through America’s past and challenges them with activities to spark discussion and deepen their understanding for how America came to be. These activities include: -map analysis -discussion questions -graphic organizers -research opportunities Mark Twain Media Publishing Company proudly creates engaging supplemental books and decorations for middle-grade and upper-grade classrooms. Designed by leading educators, Mark Twain products cover a range of subjects, including science, language arts, fine arts, government, social studies, history, character, and conduct.
"For those unaware—as I was until I read this book—that Mark Twain was one of America's early animal advocates, Shelley Fisher Fishkin's collection of his writings on animals will come as a revelation. Many of these pieces are as fresh and lively as when they were first written, and it's wonderful to have them gathered in one place." —Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and The Life You Can Save “A truly exhilarating work. Mark Twain's animal-friendly views would not be out of place today, and indeed, in certain respects, Twain is still ahead of us: claiming, correctly, that there are certain degraded practices that only humans inflict on one another and upon other animals. Fishkin has done a splendid job: I cannot remember reading something so consistently excellent."—Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and The Face on Your Plate "Shelley Fisher Fishkin has given us the lifelong arc of the great man's antic, hilarious, and subtly profound explorations of the animal world, and she's guided us through it with her own trademark wit and acumen. Dogged if she hasn't." —Ron Powers, author of Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain and Mark Twain: A Life
This collection of Mark Twain quotes presents the best of the curmudgeonly writer's thoughts on diet, exercise, medicine, smoking, drinking, romance, parenting, old age, fashion, finances, politics, and stress management. Curated by a well-known Twain expert and mining lesser-known texts, speeches, and notebooks, it's the perfect gift for anyone who's had enough of Gwyneth's self-righteous advice and the ramblings of the blogosphere. "Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."—from an April 15, 1882 speech "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."—from Pudd'nhead Wilson "The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands."—from "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper" Mark Dawidziak has been the television critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since 1999 and is the author of many books, including the 1994 horror novel Grave Secrets and two histories of landmark TV series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook and The Night Stalker Companion. A recognized Mark Twain scholar, his acclaimed books on the author include Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing and Horton Foote's The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain. He is also a playwright, director, and actor as well as an adjunct professor of journalism at Kent State University.
Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn, more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art. In Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American speech played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn. Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how the voices of African-Americans have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature. Fishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckleberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature. A slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying"--satire in an African-American vein--when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well--but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized. Was Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon. American literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices." Was Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.
The official guide to The Mark Twain House & Museum, this volume tells the dramatic story of the famous author and his family and their Victorian mansion. The history of the house and its residents is illustrated with architectural drawings and period photos as well as dozens of new color images of the building's magnificent exterior and interior.
