Gregg, I think you are being intelektualy lazy. It is the awthur's dooty to catch misteaks. I know that Twain never made none in his works. Our local shcool uses "Life on the Mississippi" as a geography text it is so good and acurate. I think a good riter also uses only refrences to important classical sourses. I'm with Fears that compairing Twain to people that ordinary people might understand -- not literairy people like us smart peple on this list understand -- is bad. I would have been happyer if Powerses' book only referd to people like the English greats Chaucer, Sheakspeare, and Spencer or to Romans like Cicero, Virgil, and Liver. I think this is a reflexion of the cultural decline our nation is experiancing and why there are so many alliens living here and why I want them all to go home except for Maria who cleans my house on thursdays and Juan who cuts the grass and all the people who work in my cousin Leroys restaurant in St. Louis and that is what is really wrong with the Powers book. Please quit being such a whiner, Gregg. You better spend some time going over the books you have wrote. I know for a fack that you used a colon one time when a proper writer like Mr. Fears would have used a small intestine. Terrell