Product Description: Tongue-Oil Timothy, as unflappable as he is unconscionable, swindles Wasatch Sam in a villainous poker game. Amazed prospectors discover a full-grown silver man deep in a mountain tunnel. Old Pizen, a horse so mean that he was almost poison to himself, is wagered by his own owner in the fight of his life...read more

A Prescription for Adversity makes the revolutionary case that Ambrose Bierce, far from being a bitter misanthrope, was instead both a compassionate and moral author. Berkove, focusing on Bierce's short fiction, establishes the necessity of recognizing the pattern of his intellectual and literary development over the course of his career. The author shows that Bierce, probably the American author with the most extensive experience of the Civil War, turned to classical Stoicism and English and French Enlightenment literature in his postwar search for meaning. Bierce's fiction arose from his ultimately unsatisfying encounters with the philosophies those sources offered, but the moral commitment as well as the literary techniques of their authors, particularly Jonathan Swift, inspired him. Dating Bierce's fiction, and introducing uncollected journalism, correspondence, and important new literary history and biographical information, Berkove brings new insights to a number of stories, including "A Son of the Gods" and "A Horseman in the Sky, " but especially "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, " and presents compelling readings of the Parenticide Club tales and "Moxon's Master." A Prescription for Adversity substantiates how Bierce at his best is one of the few American authors who rise to the level of Mark Twain, and the only one who touches Jonathan Swift. A work of both biography and literary criticism, this book rescues Ambrose Bierce and his literature from the neglect to which it has been assigned by "illfounded, obtuse, and unproductive approaches based on skewed notions of his personality and forced or facile readings of individual stories." (view table of contents)

'Sixty-eight selections representing writers who spent their creative years in Nevada from the 1860s to the early twentieth century and have become known as the Sagebrush School. Features Mark Twain, Dan De Quille, Sam Davis, Joe Goodman, and Rollin Daggett, and lesser-known writers Arthur McEwen, Fred Hart, and others'--Provided by publisher.

Product Description: The two plays in this collection, The Luck of Roaring Camp, by Bret Harte, and The Prince of Timbuctoo, by Sam Davis, were written by Old West authors as the nineteenth century transitioned into the twentieth. Both plays are original treatments of Americans in the Old World--France and Africa, respectively...read more

Product Description: This volume in the Critical Insights series begins with an essay entitled "On Jack London," which is a brief discussion of his life and works. A longer biographical section follows. Original essays include a discussion of the literary careers of Jack London and Mark Twain and a close examination of the critical reception of London's works...read more

Product Description: This unique collection of Twain’s essential short stories and semiautobiographical narratives is a testament to the author’s vast imagination. Featuring popular tales such as “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” as well as some delightful excerpts from The Diaries of Adam and Eve, this compilation also includes darker works written in the author’s twilight years...read more