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Tag Archives: Mark Twain
Under Fire: Mark Twain’s Experiences in the Confederate Militia
As I explored in a previous blog, Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens lived a complex life. One of the lesser-known facets of his life is his limited service during the American Civil War. Though it may not be a purely non-fiction retelling … Continue reading
Mark Twain’s Internal Civil War
Mark Twain is as famous and talented a writer as Samuel Clemens was a divided man. Haunted by his guilty conscience, deeply torn by contemporary events, and plagued with debt, Sam Clemens did not live the positive life than many … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Personalities
Tagged depression, Huckleberry Finn, loss, Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, Tom Sawyer, trauma
4 Comments
Town Between the Rivers: Cairo, Illinois
A blue-coated rider appeared atop the riverbank above the steamer Belle Memphis. Rebels massed in the cornfield behind him fired volleys that whistled by the horseman, whanged through the tall smokestacks, and thudded into the vessel’s superstructure. Hundreds of Iowa … Continue reading
ECW Weekender: Mark Twain’s Home Library (Virtually)
This week I’ve been trying to find some virtual tours of home libraries from the 19th Century. While Mark Twain’s connection to the Civil War is loose (he headed for Nevada Territory in 1861), his post-war friendship with Ulysses S. … Continue reading
Posted in ECW Weekender
Tagged ECW Weekender, home-libraries, Mark Twain, tales-from-the-home-libraries, virtual tour, Weekender
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BookChat with Cody Marrs, author of Not Even Past
As a big fan of the Civil War in pop culture, I was especially looking forward to Cody Marrs’ new book Not Even Past: The Stories We Keep Telling About the Civil War, which deals with the ways “the story … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Civil War in Pop Culture, Lincoln, Memory, Politics, Reconstruction, Slavery
Tagged Alice Fahs, Birth of a Nation, BookChat, Cody Marrs, D. W. Griffith, David Blight, Edward Pollard, emancipation, Evelyn Scott, Fire on the Mountain, Gary Gallagher, Gone with the Wind, Johns Hopkins University Press, Jubilee, Lioncoln, Margaret Walker, Mark Twain, Memory, Not Even Past, Reconstruction, Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, Terry Bisson, The Lost Cause, The Wave, W.E.B. DuBois, William Faulkner
2 Comments
A Box of Hellmira
It’s always exciting to have a box of new ECW books show up on my doorstep. The latest package, arrived this week, was filled with Derek Maxfield’s new entry in the ECW Series, Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Emerging Civil War Series, Memory
Tagged Derek Maxfield, Elmira, Emerging Civil War Series, Hellmira, Mark Twain
2 Comments
Ursula Le Guin, Huckleberry Finn, and Monument Controversies
In class last week, I was talking with my writing students about assumptions we, as writers, sometimes make about our audiences. (Moral of the story: We, as writers, should not make assumptions about our readers.) For the day’s reading, I … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, Monuments
Tagged Confederate monuments, Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, monumental-discussion, Monuments, Ursula Le Guin
3 Comments
Twain, the War and Life on the Mississippi
For Civil War News I recently wrote a piece on how Ulysses S. Grant managed to finish his Personal Memoirs just before his death in 1885. My article proved so long that CWN Publisher Jack Melton split it for two … Continue reading
Ulysses S. Grant and “The Babies”
My wife recently sent to me a photo of our six-month-old son with his foot in his mouth. That’s a feat I, in adulthood, occasionally still pull off, although in a less envious way and with more embarrassment. However, for … Continue reading
Cancer and Bitterness: Ulysses S. Grant Nurses His Sickness
As Ulysses S. Grant’s throat cancer continued to eat away at him through the spring of 1885, he continued to struggle with pain of another sort, too. He was, at the time, in a race to complete his memoirs before … Continue reading
