Title: Mark Twain's America
First published: 1932
Description: Beginning in 1835, the birth year of Samuel Clemens, and extending through the Gilded Age, Mark Twain's America depicts the vigorous social and historical forces that produced the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Bernard DeVoto catches a people moving west: Twain's own family drifting down the Ohio, emigrants of every stripe, the famous and the obscure.

Answering genteel critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, who blamed the American frontier for stifling Twain's genius, DeVoto shows that, in fact, Twain's early days in Nevada and California made a writer of him. Mark Twain's America, first published in 1932, enriched by humor and supernatural slave lore, is an enduring work of American literary and cultural criticism.
Subjects: America, American Authors, Authors, American, Biography, Civilization, Contemporary United States, Knowledge, Social life and customs, Twain, mark, 1835-1910, United states, history, 1865-1898, United states, intellectual life, Critique et interprétation, Civilisation des Etats-Unis. XIXe s., Écrivains américains, Biographies, Civilisation
Places: United States, West (U.S.)
People: Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Time periods: 19th century