Reviews for A Historical Guide to Mark Twain (Historical Guides to American Authors)

The average rating for A Historical Guide to Mark Twain (Historical Guides to American Authors) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-15 00:00:00 Riccardo Caranci Hope Gets In your Eyes - A Pulpist Calls for World Peace I will never know what it feels like to be black, let alone what it means. As a child, prowling for candy with a pocketful of change, I never fell under the suspicious glare of a profiling store clerk. As an adult I haven't been passed over for a position for which I was qualified - nor for that matter passed by a cab I was attempting to hail - simply because of the color of my skin. I never got arbitrarily smacked by the short end of the stick, discriminately snatched by the long arm of the law - and when I eventually did - by both - it was due to my own damn foolishness. No, I've not suffered any of the myriad indignities that are the unwanted legacy of my forced-to-be-Founding brothers and sisters. But as a white man, and as a convict, I do know what it feels like - if not exactly what it means - to be a minority within a so-called minority, one of the fewest among the too-many few. What NextThis puts me in a unique position vis-à-vis Walter Mosley's What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace (Black Classic Press $16.95), a book - and a call - that was intended neither for a white man nor a convict. On the one hand this is not my conversation; on the other I can't help eavesdropping when my ears start ringing. Mosley may not be talkin' to me, but he sure as hell is talkin' about something that concerns me and everyone else in the unfree world. Excuse me if I wedge a word in edgewise. Briefly, What Next is a deeply felt, deeply thought, softly spoken manifesto for the emancipated, a call for those who've gained their freedom to now turn their efforts to those still shackled to tyranny, both here and (especially) abroad. Mosley makes and takes his case to "Black America, [and] its fine-honed attention to the etiquette of liberation," though it could just as well be meant for everyone. That he bases his argument upon examples set by his father, LeRoy Mosley - "a Black Socrates" whose words and ghost permeate the soul of this tome - makes it distinctly personal. Like his father, Mosley found himself under attack for the color of his flag rather than his skin. For Pops it was across the pond in WWII, when German bullets turned out to be anything but race-based; for the son it was here at home, on 9/11. Both were targets because they were American, nothing more and nothing less; and both were forced to reconsider what it meant to be red, white, and blue - and black. The revelations left them with enemies they never even knew they had. But why the hate? Why the hurt? Why the harm? Again shadowing Dad, Mosley digs "asking why, and then spoiling readymade replies." And he's not at all happy with the answers he's being given. There's a root to all evil, all hate and hurt and harm; our enemies are there for some reason. We gotta get to the root - and the reason - before we rush to judgment. "How do we know when someone is our enemy?" Well, not because someone has told us so. And certainly not by becoming them. Again with Dad: "My father would never become his enemy to make a point." (Are you listening Mr. Ashcroft?) Now that's a creed for every color. And don't think for a minute that Mosley's falling for the fear factor either. "If we give in to fear or support the domination of the world's impoverished billions by our corporations," he writes, "then strife, war, and death are inescapable. And in that conflagration, we too shall be consumed." Mosley, the Good Soldier of Peace - responsible, alert, and astute - is takin' out a little fire insurance. But what to do? Polls show - and Mosley knows - that most African Americans already - rightly - resist the strong arm approach to peace; it's high time to harness that sentiment and put it to work. Brace it with a well-informed community; advance it with a campaign of pressure, protest, and boycott. Put the PAC-squeeze on the shot-callers (begin locally); and if they keep spitting bullets, pull out the protests and - even better - the boycotts, because we all know how the powers-that-rule value their bottom line. Mosley's goal is "unequivocal world peace and security, freedom from starvation, and respect for the sovereignty of all nations." A bold and - some might say - foolishly hopeful proposition. Mosley may be a hard-boiled Utopian, but he's no fool. He knows that hope is not a course of action and that action begins at home. This is his beginning. What Next may have come too late to stop the war; let's get beyond hope before it's too late to start the peace.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-06 00:00:00 Romanin Sebastian An often overlooked and underrated contribution to Mosley's body of work. This memoir really captures a number of the personal and very human responses to 911. Mosley asks and seeks answers in this book for many of the questions that popped up and for some still seem unanswered.