Mark Twain: The Divided Mind of America's Best-Loved Writer

Prentice Hall is proud to publish the Library of American Biography series, offering ideal reading for introductory and upper-level courses in American history. These concise biographies focus on individuals whose actions and ideas greatly influenced American history and relate the lives of the subjects to the issues and events of their times.

Under series editor Mark C. Carnes, the Library of American Biography series is being revised and updated with today's students in mind. All volumes are offered at a lower price, and each new volume includes Study and Discussion Questions, which encourage readers to reflect on the role of the profiled individual in shaping American history.

Like the steamboat on which Mark Twain adopted his pen name, the industrial growth that swept America in the latter half of the nineteenth century prompted Americans to react variously with delight, awe, fear, excitement for the future, and nostalgia for a simpler time. David Levy's biography places Mark Twain and his work in the context of sweeping societal changes: westward expansion, the Civil War, American imperialism, the end of slavery and start of a new chapter in race relations, and the advances and excesses of the Gilded Age.

David W. Levy is David Ross Boyd Professor of American History, Emeritus, at the University of Oklahoma, where he won the Regents' Award for Superior Teaching and the Student Association's prize for outstanding teacher. He specializes in American intellectual history. He has authored or co-edited ten books, including The Debate Over Vietnam (JHU Press, 1991), FDR's Fireside Chats (Penguin, 1993), and a new edition of William Dean Howells's 1894 novel A Traveler from Altruria (St. Martin's, 1996).