Mark Twain

Justin Kaplan

A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's court

Traces the lives of cousins William Waldorf Astor and John Jacob Astor IV, rivals who pursued separate ambitions, built the original Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and influenced social behavior before John Jacob perished aboard the Titanic.

Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

When the Astors Owned New York

Walt Whitman

I. Kaplan, Justine. II. Leaves of grass, (1855); Leaves of grass (1891-92); Complete prose works (1892); Supplementary prose.

Complete Poetry and Collected Prose

Anne Bernays

As delightful and playful as it is profound and serious, The Language of Names is an absolute original -- a fascinating book that reveals us to ourselves, that demonstrates the endless variety of ways in which names shape our daily lives. Drawing on social and literary history, psychology and anthropology, anecdotes, and life stories, biographer Justin Kaplan and novelist Anne Bernays have written a fascinating account of names and naming in contemporary society that touches on class structure, ethnic and religious practices, manners, and everyday life. Graceful, eloquent, and richly informed, The Language of Names explores and illuminates our favorite subject -- ourselves.

What We Call Ourselves and Why It Matters

The Language of Names

Whitman's genius, passions, poetry, and androgynous sensibility entwined to create an exuberant life amid the turbulent American mid-nineteenth century. In vivid detail, Kaplan examines the mysterious selves of the enigmatic man who celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man.

A Life

Delves into the conflict between Clemens the man seeking success and Twain the man bound by morals

A Biography

Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain

Although this biography of Mark Twain begins when Twain is 31 ... the book is a full account of Twain, his life and his work related both to his early years and to the 'Gilded Age' of his mature life.

Mark Twain, the American comic genius who portrayed, named, and in part exemplified America’s “Gilded Age,” comes alive in Justin Kaplan’s extraordinary biography. With brilliant immediacy, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brings to life a towering literary figure whose dual persona symbolized the emerging American conflict between down-to-earth morality and freewheeling ambition. As Mark Twain, he was the Mississippi riverboat pilot, the satirist with a fiery hatred of pretension, and the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer andHuckleberry Finn. As Mr. Clemens, he was the star who married an heiress, built a palatial estate, threw away fortunes on harebrained financial schemes, and lived the extravagant life that Mark Twain despised. Kaplan effectively portrays the triumphant-tragic man whose achievements and failures, laughter and anger, reflect a crucial generation in our past as well as his own dark, divided, and remarkably contemporary spirit. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brilliantly conveys this towering literary figure who was himself a symbol of the peculiarly American conflict between moral scrutiny and the drive to succeed. Mr. Clemens lived the Gilded Life that Mark Twain despised. The merging and fragmenting of these and other identities, as the biography unfolds, results in a magnificent projection of the whole man; the great comic spirit; and the exuberant, tragic human being, who, his friend William Dean Howells said, was “sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.”

Justin Kaplan

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