Mark Twain's America
1932
First Published
3.68
Average Rating
353
Number of Pages
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.
Avg Rating
3.68
Number of Ratings
31
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
29%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
3%
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Author
Bernard DeVoto
Author · 8 books
Bernard Augustine DeVoto was an American historian and author who specialized in the history of the American West.
