He “lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened.” Now 100 years since Mark Twain’s death, the first volume of the author’s uncensored autobiography is published—per his strict orders to wait these ten decades.

The first major American writer born away from the East Coast, Twain was funny, frank, and wrote with a distinctively American voice. Creator of such beloved characters as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, these final words are a candid telling of his life, intentionally made public now that he is “dead, and unaware, and indifferent.”

A sure treat for anyone with an appreciation for Mark Twain’s humorous and often irreverent commentary on mankind; we’ll leave you with a couple other favorite quotes and recommend that you go hunker down with this big tome.

“I never let schooling interfere with my education.”

“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

“Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.”

“You can not depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Got a Mark Twain admirer in the family? Here’s Amazon’s Christmas Shipping Cutoffs.

$19 at Amazon • Read more about it

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Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities

In pages

Did you ever thumb through that old dictionary at your grandparents’ house? Perhaps you even referenced the tome in the bibliography of your fourth grade term paper.

If such memories ring a bell then you probably recall the intricate engravings carefully wrapped in columns of definitions—a visual respite in a swarm of text. The images were often a helpful depiction of the adjacent term and occasionally an awkward glimpse at notions of a previous era.

Victorian Visuals

Printer, bookbinder and artist John M. Carrera found one such volume under his grandfather’s favorite reading chair and became inspired to put together a new book.

Carrera spent the next ten years with thousands of engravings, borrowed from Yale’s Sterling Library, organizing the little blocks and producing the Pictorial Webster’s, which he describes as, “in simplest terms, an artistic visual reference of what was important to 19th Century America.”

Take the eight minutes and watch Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion. The time and passion that went in to creating this book is incredible.

Bound imagination

The result is more an artistic tribute and historical record than a reference title. Most visual dictionaries, heck even Richard Scary’s Best Word Book Ever, are organized by categories and groupings to assist your understanding of what you’re looking at. Carrera’s Pictorial Webster’s is arranged instead in alphabetical order, leaving your imagination to make associations of its own.

Win one

Craftsman that he is, the fine press editions of the book have been hand-printed, hand-bound and the finger tabs of the 400 plus pages, hand-cut and are sold for upwards of $4K. Someone very special will win Edition C, of A-Z, from Chronicle Books—will it be you?

Thankfully for the rest of us this affordable trade edition is available.

See the world through the images of Webster’s past. The Pictorial Webster’s is sold direct from Chronicle Books for $35.

Also for sale at:

• Amazon.com, $23

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