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For a man who liked being called the American, Mark Twain spent a
surprising amount of time outside the continental United States.
Biographer Roy Morris, Jr., focuses on the dozen years Twain spent
overseas and on the popular travel books-The Innocents Abroad, A
Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator-he wrote about his
adventures. Unintimidated by Old World sophistication and unafraid
to travel to less developed parts of the globe, Twain encouraged
American readers to follow him around the world at the dawn of mass
tourism, when advances in transportation made leisure travel
possible for an emerging middle class. In so doing, he helped lead
Americans into the twentieth century and guided them toward more
cosmopolitan views. In his first book, The Innocents Abroad (1869),
Twain introduced readers to the "American Vandal," a brash,
unapologetic visitor to foreign lands, unimpressed with the local
ambiance but eager to appropriate any souvenir that could be
carried off. He adopted this persona throughout his career, even
after he grew into an international celebrity who dined with the
German Kaiser, traded quips with the king of England, gossiped with
the Austrian emperor, and negotiated with the president of
Transvaal for the release of war prisoners. American Vandal
presents an unfamiliar Twain: not the bred-in-the-bone Midwesterner
we associate with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer but a global citizen
whose exposure to other peoples and places influenced his evolving
positions on race, war, and imperialism, as both he and America
emerged on the world stage.
The American book tour that catapulted Gertrude Stein from quirky
artist to a household name. In 1933, experimental writer and
longtime expatriate Gertrude Stein skyrocketed to overnight fame
with the publication of an unlikely best seller, The Autobiography
of Alice B. Toklas. Pantomiming the voice of her partner Alice, The
Autobiography was actually Gertrude's work. But whoever the real
author was, the uncharacteristically lucid and readable book won
over the hearts of thousands of Americans, whose clamor to meet
Gertrude and Alice in person convinced them to return to America
for the first time in thirty years from their self-imposed exile in
France. For more than six months, Gertrude and Alice crisscrossed
America, from New England to California, from Minnesota to Texas,
stopping at thirty-seven different cities along the way. They had
tea with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, attended a star-studded
dinner party at Charlie Chaplin's home in Beverly Hills, enjoyed
fifty-yard-line seats at the annual Yale-Dartmouth football game,
and rode along with a homicide detective through the streets of
Chicago. They met with the Raven Society in Edgar Allan Poe's old
room at the University of Virginia, toured notable Civil War
battlefields, and ate Oysters Rockefeller for the first time at
Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans. Everywhere they went, they
were treated like everyone's favorite maiden aunts-colorful,
eccentric, and eminently quotable. In Gertrude Stein Has Arrived,
noted literary biographer Roy Morris Jr. recounts with
characteristic energy and wit the couple's rollicking tour,
revealing how-much to their surprise-they rediscovered their
American roots after three decades of living abroad. Entertaining
and sympathetic, this clear-eyed account captures Gertrude Stein
for the larger-than-life legend she was and shows the unique
relationship she had with her indefatigable companion, Alice B.
Toklas-the true power behind the throne.
The first full account of Whitman's Civil War years sheds new light on the man, his poetry, and the treatment of the war's sick and wounded.
History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Self-Esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement. These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911, Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. There was nothing harmless about Ambrose Bierce, and the words he shaped into verbal pitchforks a century ago--with or without the devil's help--can still draw blood today.
Ambrose Bierce once wrote a review that should be posted in every publisher's office: 'The covers of this book are too far aprt.' Described as 'an eccentric who remains wickedly quotable', Bierce was one of the most celebrated reporters of his eara. He bu8ilt his literary reputation partly on The Devil's Dictionary, a satiric lexicon first published as The Cyni's Word Book in 1906, and later reissued under the author's preferred titled in 1911. The barbed definitions that Bierce began publishing in the Wasp, a weekly journal he edited in San Francisco from 1881-1886 brought this 19th century stock form to a new level of artistry. Bierce lampooned social, professionsl, and religious convention as in his definitions for bore-'A person who talks when you wish him to listen'; architect -'One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money',; and saint-'A dead sinner, revised and edited.'
Ambrose Bierce is one of the most acerbic and distinctive voices in American literature. A master of the short story, the aphorism and the insult, he is remembered as much for his one-liners, his misanthropy and his enigmatic death as for his published works. In addition to tracing an unusual life, Morris assesses Bierce's Civil War experiences and the writings they spawned. Morris's portrait of Bierce goes beyond chronicling his eccentricities, showing him to be a loyal friend, an heroic soldier, and an often brilliant writer.
DAUGHTER OF THE JAGUAR is an action-adventure/romance involving a
former Marine troubled by his uncanny ability to recall events long
past and a Mexican girl whom, though she opposes his opinions, he
learns to treasure as no other. Laced with life-altering
experience, twists of fate and humor, it is rich in revelations
about Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs and the magnificent stone
heads of the ancient Olmecs. When a Cessna bound for Oaxaca bearing
Peter Stedman and two colleagues from THE DENVER POST is forced to
land at ancient site in a remote region of the Southern Sierra
Madres, its occupants elude would-be bandits to arrive at the
idyllic town of Las Minas. Here, Peter meets Leonor, a beautiful
woman considered to be a bruja or witch by locals. They share an
intense romance, including a remarkable discovery Leonor has made
of the ancient Olmecs who claimed descent from the mating of a
woman and a jaguar. Uncertain about his ability to sustain Leonor's
affection and the gulf between his abiding faith and her lack,
Peter Ponders the feasibility of their relationship when he and his
companions are forced to flee from a hurricane. Later, returning to
Denver, Peter undergoes a painful realization that compels him to
find Leonor again--resulting in a death-defying climb up a canyon
wall, capture by the same bandits he eluded earlier, a jarring
encounter with junkyard jaguars and the discovery of a treasure he
is fleetingly allowed to witness dating back to the Spanish
conquest.
Memory and Myth is an interdisciplinary study of the Civil War and
its enduring impact on American writers and filmmakers. Its
twenty-five chapters are all concerned, in one way or another, with
creative responses to the Civil War, and the ways in which artists
have sought to make sense of the war and to convey their findings
to succeeding generations of readers and filmgoers. The book also
examines the role of movies and television in transmuting the
historical memories of the Civil War into durable, ever-changing
myths.
Arriving at the port of New York in 1882, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde
quipped he had "nothing to declare but my genius." But as Roy
Morris, Jr., reveals in this sparkling narrative, Wilde was, for
the first time in his life, underselling himself. A chronicle of
the sensation that was Wilde's eleven-month speaking tour of
America, Declaring His Genius offers an indelible portrait of both
Oscar Wilde and the Gilded Age. Wilde covered 15,000 miles,
delivered 140 lectures, and met everyone who was anyone. Dressed in
satin knee britches and black silk stockings, the long-haired
apostle of the British Aesthetic Movement alternately shocked,
entertained, and enlightened a spellbound nation. Harvard students
attending one of his lectures sported Wildean costume, clutching
sunflowers and affecting world-weary poses. Denver prostitutes
enticed customers by crying: "We know what makes a cat wild, but
what makes Oscar Wilde?" Whitman hoisted a glass to his health,
while Ambrose Bierce denounced him as a fraud. Wilde helped alter
the way post-Civil War Americans-still reeling from the most
destructive conflict in their history-understood themselves. In an
era that saw rapid technological changes, social upheaval, and an
ever-widening gap between rich and poor, he delivered a powerful
anti-materialistic message about art and the need for beauty. Yet
Wilde too was changed by his tour. Having conquered America, a
savvier, more mature writer was ready to take on the rest of the
world. Neither Wilde nor America would ever be the same.
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