In 1873, Mark Twain wrote, with the collaboration of Charles Dudley Warner, his first novel, The Gilded Age. It was Twain who created the basic plot and characterization, and Twain who wrote major portions of the book - which he later clearly identified as his own. Despite its being a best seller in its day, the book has received little attention in recent years, and one of Twain's most memorable characters has been almost forgotten. Now, by using only Twain's words in The Gilded Age (with minor bridging), Charles Neider has brought forth a "new" - literally speaking - Twain novel. The book is a marvelous, biting satire of the Reconstruction Era, that boisterous time when Everyman's motto was "get-rich-quicker," and political chicanery ran rampant. America's greatest humorist is at his very best, with his engaging, warm-hearted, grafting rascal of a hero, Colonel Sellers, one of the immortal comic creations in American literature.
