A Novel Marketplace: Mass Culture, the Book Trade, and Postwar American Fiction Book

This book is based on the documentary film of the same name, directed by Ken Burns. It's a great overview of Samuel Clemens's life. It does a good job describing his life, but I've always believed you can learn more about a person by reading his or her own works than by reading descriptions provided by others and filtered through their own biases. I am looking forward reading more of Clemens's original works. In some ways he was a man born before his time, in other ways he would not have fit in with later generations. This allowed him to speak his mind and sometimes very bluntly without getting himself into trouble; in fact it seemed to endear him more to his admiring public.

He was outspoken about the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of women, and that the United States had no business establishing itself as an empire and sticking its nose in other countries' business, especially when it brought more power to the federal government, lined the pockets of greedy politicians and business men, an created deep undercurrents to be taken advantage of by overreaching expansionists and religious fanatics. "I am anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land," he said. "This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth'ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!"