In their own quiet way, spelling and grammar are each forms of lobbying. We treat language as an immutable fact, but it started out as a variety of opinions on what things should be called. And those opinions, like a diamond pressed into form, slowly molded into a definitive shape. But even though language started from dissent, there’s a limit to how much dissent we can tolerate... By Ernie Smith.

The author helped create a library in the last town he called home—and it's full of great summer reading suggestions.

In today’s encore excerpt -- from Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1 by Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens attempted to write his autobiography over several decades but never finished, and instructed that the draft not be made available for 100 years...

Sometimes it can seem as though the more we think we know a historical figure, the less we actually do. Helen Keller? We’ve all seen (or think we’ve seen) some version of The Miracle Worker, right?—even if we haven’t actually read Keller’s autobiography. And Mark Twain? He can seem like an old family friend...

Andrew Levy's searching book adds to, and comments on, the considerable scholarship surrounding an widely read and widely challenged American classic.

Insights into the just-published second volume of The Autobiography of Mark Twain.