Mark Twain

Description

David W. Levy is David Ross Boyd Professor of American History, Emeritus, at the University of Oklahoma, where he won the Regents’ Award for Superior Teaching and the Student Association’s prize for outstanding teacher. He specializes in American intellectual history. He has authored or co-edited ten books, including The Debate Over Vietnam (JHU Press, 1991), FDR’s Fireside Chats (Penguin, 1993),  and a new edition of William Dean Howells’s 1894 novel A Traveler from Altruria (St. Martin’s, 1996).
The life and writings of a beloved American writer illuminate the Gilded Age and reveal his ambivalence toward the changes wrought by industry and wealth.

Like the steamboat on which Mark Twain adopted his pen name, the industrial growth that swept America in the latter half of the nineteenth century prompted Americans to react variously with delight, awe, fear, excitement for the future, and nostalgia for a simpler time. David Levy’s biography places Mark Twain and his work in the context of sweeping societal changes: westward expansion, the Civil War, American imperialism, the end of slavery and start of a new chapter in race relations,  and the advances and excesses of the Gilded Age.

Paperback, brief, and inexpensive, each of the titles in the Library of American Biography series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times.

The life and writings of a beloved American writer illuminate the Gilded Age and reveal his ambivalence toward the changes wrought by industry and wealth.

Like the steamboat on which Mark Twain adopted his pen name, the industrial growth that swept America in the latter half of the nineteenth century prompted Americans to react variously with delight, awe, fear, excitement for the future, and nostalgia for a simpler time. David Levy’s biography places Mark Twain and his work in the context of sweeping societal changes: westward expansion, the Civil War, American imperialism,the end of slavery and start of a new chapter in race relations,  and the advances and excesses of the Gilded Age.

Paperback, brief, and inexpensive, each of the titles in the Library of American Biography series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times.

Prologue

PART ONE: PREPARATION
Chapter One: Growing Up in Hannibal
Chapter Two: The Great Mississippi
Chapter Three: A Young Man Goes West
Chapter Four: Making God’s Creatures Laugh
Chapter Five: A Cynic among the Pilgrims
Chapter Six: Livy

PART TWO: FAME
Chapter Seven: Hartford
Chapter Eight: A Writer of Remarkable Books
Chapter Nine: “The Best Book We’ve Had”

PART THREE: DESPAIR
Chapter Ten: A Writer Who Thought He Was a Businessman
Chapter Eleven: Writing His Way Out of Debt
Chapter Twelve: At The End, Dark Despair

Epilogue

• Through Twain, who came of age during the volatile years preceding the Civil War, this book examines slavery and race relations and the lifelong evolution of the subject’s own attitudes toward them.
• Discusses the growth of industrialization during the Gilded Age, as well as the proliferation of speculation and get-rich-quick schemes — and explores the tension between America’s embrace of modern, urban, industrial life and its nostalgia for rural simplicity. 
• Provides coverage of westward expansion, especially in the wild regions of the mining frontier.
• Traces the development of popular culture, journalism, and book publishing during the nineteenth century.
• Acquaints students with the works of Mark Twain and contextualizes them within the author’s life and American history.
• Devotes an entire chapter to examining Twain’s celebrated Huckleberry Finn, in particular, its racial themes and its problematic ending.