A Northwestern University journalism student, professor and 2011 graduate are driving 13,500 miles around the United States between Sept. 18 and Dec. 11 for a project titled “Traveling with Twain in Search of America’s Identity.” The three will follow the path that a young Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) took by stagecoach, steamship and train during trips east to New York, south to New Orleans and west to San Francisco during the 1850s and 1860s; they will interview a variety of Americans about race, immigration-status and other current identity issues and talk with members of a representative American family, the Ghigliones, that first immigrated to the United States from northern Italy in the 1870s. Read more >>
On a Friday afternoon, Merlene Davis is playfully cussing out John Carroll, her former editor. We’re in a cold first-floor conference room of the Lexington Herlad-Leader, and Carroll had recommended we talk to Davis during our … Read more
Though best known for his ten years as editor of The Baltimore Sun and five years as editor of the Los Angeles Times (during which the staff won 13 Pulitzers), John S. Carroll can speak about … Read more
For the two hours we have to spend in Cincinnati we focus on food and a photo. The photo, an amazing 1848 daguerreotype view from across the Ohio River, details two miles of the Cincinnati waterfront … Read more
Today’s Washington-to-Pittsburgh drive is a typical dawn-to-dusk Twain-tripper—drive three hours, interview someone, drive half an hour, visit a national memorial, drive two hours, walk a town, drive an hour, stop for the night. But the someone … Read more
