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