Mark Twain's America

By Bernard DeVoto

Book Overview

Beginning in 1835, the birth year of Samuel Clemens, and extending through the Gilded Age, Mark Twain's America depicts the vigorous social and historical forces that produced the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Bernard DeVoto catches a people moving west: Twain's own family drifting down the Ohio, emigrants of every stripe, the famous and the obscure. Answering genteel critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, who blamed the American frontier for stifling Twain's genius, DeVoto shows that, in fact, Twain's early days in Nevada and California made a writer of him. Mark Twain's America , first published in 1932, enriched by western humor and supernatural slave lore, is an enduring work of American literary and cultural criticism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803266073
• ISBN13: 9780803266070
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

devoto

Haven't read de voto for many years and had to pick up the style again, and finally, what a pleasure. The times come alive.