The following new publications may be of interest to Forum members:
NONFICTION
_Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western
Steamboat World_ by Thomas C. Buchanan. Hardcover. 264 pp., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4,
34 illus., 5 tables, 2 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index. University of
North Carolina Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8078-2909-9. $32.50. According to the
author, the book uncovers the Mississippi River experience personified in
Twain's Jim from _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ but neglected in Twain's
personal reflections in _Life on the Mississippi_. The introduction chapter
and table of contents for this book are online at the publisher's website.
http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/buchanan_black.html
Amazon features a "search inside the book" option:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807829099/twainwebmarktwaiA/
~~~~~
_American Writers at Home_ by J. D. McClatchy. Photographs by Erica
Lennard. Hardcover. 224 pages. Library of America in Association with The
Vendome Press, 2004. 12.1 x 10.1 x 0.9". ISBN 1-931082-75-8. $50.00. A
coffee table book of pictorial tours through the homes of twenty-one
American authors ranging from Louisa May Alcott to Walt Whitman. A brief
biography is included for each author. Mark Twain's home in Hartford, CT is
featured in a span of eleven pages, fifteen color photos and three archival
photos. Twain's mini-biography is not without errors. McClatchy copies the
error from the Ken Burns documentary on Mark Twain regarding the "I am
_the_ American" quote (it was most likely written by Twain about Frank
Fuller--not about himself); McClatchy writes that Clara and Jean Clemens
were born in the Hartford house (both were born in Elmira); and McClatchy
incorrectly attributes the "Lincoln of our literature" quote about Twain as
coming from Joseph Twichell (it was written by W. D. Howells). Other homes
and writers featured include: Kate Chopin, Emily Dickinson, Frederick
Douglass, Ralph W. Emerson, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Washington Irving, Robinson Jeffers, Sarah O.
Jewett, Henry W. Longfellow, Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Flannery O'Connor, Eugene O'Neill, Eudora Welty, and Edith Wharton. A
bibliography is included.
Amazon link for this book is:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931082758/twainwebmarktwaiA/
Barbara Schmidt
Book Review Editor
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