Gary Scott Smith, Mark Twain: Preacher, Prophet, and Social Philosopher. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2021. 272 pp. Cloth, $40.00. Smith's biography is the latest volume in a long tradition in Twain scholarship that includes Louis J. Budd's Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1964); The Bible According to Mark Twain, edited by Howard Baetzhold and Joseph McCullough (1996); Joe B. Fulton's The Reverend Mark Twain (2006); and Harold Bush's Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (2007). As a result, it offers mostly warmed-over observations and few new insights. (GS)
Alan Gribben, Mark Twain's Literary Resources: A Reconstruction of His Library and Reading, volume 2 (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2022). 1088 pp. Cloth, $45.00. The second volume of Gribben's monumental Mark Twain's Literary Resources is not exactly a sequel of his long-out-of-print Mark Twain's Library: A Reconstruction (1980) but a vastly expanded revision of it. No doubt...