A PEN WARMED-UP IN HELL: Mark Twain in Protest

Hardly. For this slim collection of various tidbits of Mark Twain's writings on social injustice and war is obviously an attempt to cash in on existing sentiments. Some of the personal reminiscences, such as the non-war Twain and some cohorts briefly non-participated in at the start of the Civil War, are both droll and to the point, but the majority of the offerings are brief tirades, excerpts of longer pieces whose satirical edge has been dulled by time and the exhaustion of rhetoric. In addition, the events which trigger Twain's outrage (for example the annexation of the Philippines and the Spanish-American War) pale so in contrast to the horrors of our own day that they evoke less anger than a nostalgia for the time when our evils (in retrospect) were so tidy and bounded.