Norman Dietz
Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “It’s the best book we’ve had.” A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the...
From the book:
MOST of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual - he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture. The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children
...The western Pennsylvania oil country is the historic area where the American oil industry was founded. It spawned Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller's fortune, and perhaps even the Sherman antitrust laws, as well as generations of labor strife. It is, therefore, one of the cradles of discontent in contemporary America.
In Thunder on the Mountain, a "stunning period tale" (Publishers Weekly), Poyer revisits the terrible winter
...16) America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union
A Man Without a Country is Kurt Vonnegut's hilariously funny and razor-sharp look at life ("If I die--God forbid--I would like to go to heaven to ask somebody in charge up there, 'Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?"), art ("To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."), politics ("I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq and he said,
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