Mark Twain and the Colonel

Mark Twain and the Colonel tells the story of America between 1890 and 1910 through the fully engaged involvement of the era’s two most vital participants: Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt. At this pivotal moment in our history, the previously frontier-driven expansion of America was being replaced by an America that had begun to legitimately think of itself as a world power, and a dominant presence and leader on the international stage. No longer merely a successful experiment in democracy and republicanism, America saw tensions arise between those focused on which areas of American life necessitated radical progress, and which required devout preservation. Tensions like these manifested nowhere more tellingly than between our greatest humorist and our youngest President, whose warring visions of what America could and ought to be were radically different, but nevertheless laid the bedrock for modern America – its arguments, achievements, and aspirations – as we came to see it through the twentieth century, and to the present day.

Winner of Library Journal Best Books 2012 (Biography & History) 2012

“Philip McFarland's new book, the latest in his distinguished series of American biographies and histories, fuses two vivid stories set around the first decade of the twentieth century. One touches on the astonishing career of President Theodore Roosevelt, an eastern patrician sometimes derided as a "cowboy" and saber-rattler. He speeded the emergence of modern America from a frontier nation to a world power with far-flung interests. The second of McFarland's stories follows the comparably astonishing career of the democrat and westerner Mark Twain, who came east from the closing western frontier and became famous as author, humorist, and universal sage. More than a century later, these two flamboyant personalities, each a distinctly native production and neither at a loss for words on every issue of their time, continue to occupy a formative place in the American style and imagination.”

A magnificent storyteller, Philip McFarland has told the story of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America through the intertwined lives of two of its most memorable and colorful figures: Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt. Impeccably researched, beautifully written, Mark Twain and the Colonel will delight anyone interested in American history, literature, or culture. -- Jerome Loving, author of Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens
Philip McFarland’s new book, the latest in his distinguished series of American biographies and histories, fuses two vivid stories set around the first decade of the twentieth century. One touches on the astonishing career of President Theodore Roosevelt, an eastern patrician sometimes derided as a “cowboy” and saber-rattler. He speeded the emergence of modern America from a frontier nation to a world power with far-flung interests. The second of McFarland’s stories follows the comparably astonishing career of the democrat and westerner Mark Twain, who came east from the closing western frontier and became famous as author, humorist, and universal sage. More than a century later, these two flamboyant personalities, each a distinctly native production and neither at a loss for words on every issue of their time, continue to occupy a formative place in the American style and imagination. -- Justin Kaplan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography

Philip McFarland is the author of five earlier works of nonfiction: Sojourners, Sea Dangers: The Affair of the Somers, The Brave Bostonians: Hutchinson, Quincy, Franklin, and the Coming of the American Revolution, Hawthorne in Concord, and Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe. He has also published two works of fiction.

Mark Twain and the Colonel tells the story of America between 1890 and 1910 through the fully engaged involvement of the era's two most vital participants: Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt. At this pivotal moment in our history, the previously frontier-driven expansion of America was being replaced by an America that had begun to legitimately think of itself as a world power, and a dominant presence and leader on the international stage. No longer merely a successful experiment in democracy and republicanism, America saw tensions arise between those focused on which areas of American life necessitated radical progress, and which required devout preservation. Tensions like these manifested nowhere more tellingly than between our greatest humorist and our youngest President, whose warring visions of what America could and ought to be were radically different, but nevertheless laid the bedrock for modern America - its arguments, achievements, and aspirations - as we came to see it through the twentieth century, and to the present day.

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