I think that any of us posed with the Herculean task of distilling all of the interesting events of Twain's life into 4 hours would soon despair. It's like trying to cram an elephant into a hatbox. Even if we could come upon an elephant (or a hatbox, in this day and age,) I don't know that we could do a job that would satisfy even ourselves. I think that Ken Burns at least managed to coerce the elephant into posing nicely in the steamer-trunk he was allotted. For every anecdote about Twain, I'm sure that all of us recalled a favorite quote in Twain's own words that we treasure. With a few more fortnights of film, we might just start to feel the full contentment that we've all gotten from reading and re-reading Twain's works. (And for me, reading the man's own words are the great joy of knowing Twain.) Hopefully this effort will awaken a greater interest and familiarity with the subject, like many of Ken Burns' great films have done for me in the past. I, for one, enjoyed it, and it gave me a better insight into Twain's life. I was especially delighted to see some of the obscure and rare photographs of my favorite author. "The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it." - Mark Twain's Notebook, 1904 (Thanks to Barbara Schmidt's wonderful website for putting the above quote ready at hand: http://www.twainquotes.com/Critics.html ) -- Alan Eliasen [log in to unmask] http://www.mindspring.com/~eliasen/twain/