Carrie: One study I've found intriguing is Frederic Cople Jaher, _Doubters and Dissenters: Cataclysmic Thought in America, 1885-1918_ (London: Free Press of Glencoe, Macmillan, 1964). Jaher discusses a number of Twain's contemporaries, including many of his associates in the mugwump and anti-imperialist movements, but differentiates Twain from them by claiming (in a good short statement of the critical tradition in this area) that "Twain's estrangement . . . was personal. He had never joined abortive crusades or belonged to defeated movements -- his tragedy was death, illness in the family, and financial failure." In fact, Twain did join "abortive crusades" and "defeated movements," and he identified with them. I think such works as "The Secret History of Eddypus, The World Empire," and, in particular, "Passage from 'Outlines of History,'" as well as many of his more personally focused later stories with cataclysmic endings involving families (collected in Tuckey's _Which Was the Dream_) could be reinterpreted by putting Twain back in among the cataclysmic thinkers of his time. This depersonalizes the question of Twain's cynicism quite a bit by placing it within a broader social trend within Gilded Age/Progressive Era America. At the same time, it provides a way of looking at a wide range of his writings as sharing a common underlying theme. Jim Zwick