Fellow Twainiacs, I'm about a quarter into the Kaplan bio, and have been very happy with it thus far (the trouble with being a Twainiac who also loves trains -- I've just come off a jaunt southward -- is that one keeps meeting very interesting people, which eats into the reading time). As I've said before, Hitchens has made his contrariness into a cottage industry of sorts. I think he's spot-on about that bulimic princess creature and Mother Teresa. But he misread Kaplan's book. That is, if he really READ it. I review books too, and know there are many out there who scan rather than read the books. A pity. It would be nice, though, if Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post or someone (preferably Russell Baker) at The New York Review of Books weighed in on the volume. Kathy O'Connell Record-Journal Meriden, Conn.