Alfred McCoy: Did Mark Twain Imagine Donald Trump?
If Mark Twain were alive today, he would certainly have written a novel about Donald Trump. After all, his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, distinctly caught a nineteenth-century version of our Trumpian moment, tariffs and all.
Baron Wormser: Prisoners of Virtue
Although the less-than-virtuous, the Toms and Hucks of this world, are constant threats—and thus the grounds for unremitting vigilance, if not outright alarmism—the posse of the virtuous remains snug and smug. Inwardly, they are rigid as dress parade soldiers standing at dutiful attention. Goodness is theirs.
Mark Twain: Two Ways of Seeing the River
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too.
Marc Jampole: Weapons of Math Destruction
Mathematical models for everything from marketing to perusing resumes are making inequality and discrimination against the poor and minorities worse.
Video: The New York Public Library’s Collection of Weird Objects
. A lock of Walt Whitman’s hair, Jack Kerouac’s boots, and Virginia Woolf’s cane are just a few of the items of literary paraphernalia available at the New York Public … Continue reading
Jeffrey Wasserstrom: What would Mark Twain think of Donald Trump?
Thanks to the criticisms they’ve leveled in articles, interviews, tweets and letters to the editor, we know that many contemporary authors, from Philip Roth to J.K. Rowling, have a dim … Continue reading
George Yancy: Is Your God Dead?
I don’t mean the God of the philosophers or the scholars, but, as Blaise Pascal said, the “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.” With no disrespect, I … Continue reading
Video: Mark Twain at Stormfield, 1909 (Edison film)
Shot by Thomas Edison in 1909, this digital restoration of a short film is most likely the only moving image of Twain in existence. Watch him strolling around Stormfield, his … Continue reading
