Ohio is not the first state you associate with Mark Twain. It's not the second, third, fourth, or fifth state you associate with him, given the claims made by Missouri, California, Nevada, New York and Connecticut. Still, Ohio does have many intriguing and important Twain connections. He gave lectures or readings from his works in fifteen Ohio cities. He planned on starting his married life in Cleveland, as part owner of a newspaper. And some of his most significant friendships were with Ohioans. They included early literary mentor Mary Mason Fairbanks, fellow writer William Dean Howells and...

America is cat crazy, and Mark Twain may have been the American writer most crazy about cats. From his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, to his last years in Connecticut, Mark Twain spent much of his life surrounded by cats, and they stalk through many of his best-known books, including The Innocents Aboard, Roughing It, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court, and Puddn head Wilson. In this lighthearted book, Twain scholar Mark Dawidziak explores the writer s lifelong devotion to cats through stories, excerpts, quotes, photos, and illustrations, illuminating a...