American Writers (one Hundred Pages At A Time)

Part one of my review of the underrated novel THE GILDED AGE, by Mark Twain and another guy. It is one of the most sturdy investigations into America's political and economic culture. Sellers and Hawkins got something for you to buy.

"Goldfish Bowl" by Robert A. Heinlein is almost a H. P. Lovecraft story. One of his best pieces of short fiction that I read from him.

With this final episode on FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, I finish up with Mark Twain's travel literature. Coming up is THE GILDED AGE and his later novels.

There is a lot happening in the second half of BEYOND THIS HORIZON by Robert A. Heinlein, but I skip over most of that to talk about Heinlein and the gun culture.

At the halfway point of Mark Twain's FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, we shift our focus to British India and the cultural changes and continuities in India under British rule.

BEYOND THIS HORIZON by Robert A. Heinlein came out in early 1942 in ASTOUNDING. It is one of the best early Heinlein books and explores various themes he had been developing up to this time, including his vision for a post-scarcity society and a broadly available genetically engineered society. It is also famous for its commentary on gun culture.

The part of Mark Twain's FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR that I discuss in this episode explores the British colonization of Australia and carries on many of the themes from the first part of the book. It is a brutal and honest look at forced migrations, ecological change, and genocide.

In this episode I begin the final Mark Twain travelogue FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. It is one of the greatest anti-imperialist texts of the 19th century, an excellent travelogue, and an example of Twain's most bitterly charged satire.

"Elsewhen" (also known as "Elsewhere") by Robert A. Heinlein is another borderline fantasy story that explores the unrealized potential of human beings. It also introduces the multiverse to his writing (a theme he will take up later).

"... And Be Built A Crooked House" is a solid and fun story by Robert Heinlein, exploring the geography of four dimensions through the device of a tesseract house.

A bit of fatigue with these travelogues by Mark Twain hits me in this (one of my shortest) episodes. A TRAMP ABROAD descends into more simple tourism at the end, sadly. Hopefully, I will have more to say in FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Well, this one is a doozy. BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS is one of the best Robert A. Heinlein stories yet. A perfectly constructed time travel story that begs the question: Can you lift yourself by your own bootstraps? Answer: Maybe?

Part 3 of my review of Mark Twain's A TRAMP ABROAD tried to take a big picture look at this book and its significance among Twain's travel literature.

The second part of my review of SIXTH COLUMN by Robert A. Heinlein. It is a fascinating a troublesome book about race, religion, resistance, and technology.

I continue to work my way through the works of Mark Twain with A TRAMP ABROAD. Mark Twain seems to be coming to terms with European nationalism and folklore as he makes his deep dive into the German land, culture, and people.

We go back to the travel writings with Mark Twain's 1880 A TRAMP ABROAD. These are some of the funnest to read and some of the hardest to talk about books I have ever one on this podcast. In any case, let's see what Mark Twain thinks of Europe now that he is not innocent anymore.

This one (Robert A. Heinlein's SIXTH COLUMN) certainly leaves us with lots to talk about, including Pan-Asianism, technology, religion, and race. This is episode 1 of 2 exploring this short novel, originally published in 1941.

Let's explore some Super science and posthumanism with Robert A. Heinlein's LOST LEGACY, a novella about the untapped potential of humanity and infiltrating The Boy Scouts.

In this episode I finish another book (Mark Twain's PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC) and another volume of the Library of America. At this rate, I will finish in about the time it took for France to win the 100 Years War!

Like in the previous episodes on THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC by Mark Twain, I focus on what  Joan of Arc can mean to us today. The book stans way to hard for Joan, so we need move a bit beyond the text.