Traveling with Twain

In Search of America's Identity

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Reminiscing with a former Southbridge (and current New York Times) reporter after a decade

Raymond Hernandez, 45, and I reminisced over coffee at a Starbucks in Chevy Chase, Md., about a career that has taken him from cub reporter for a 6,000-circulation, Massachusetts-mill-town daily to Washington-based investigative reporter for The … Read more >>

The Mississippi ends: A day in the French Quarter

New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon felt like a sacred and salacious holiday. With the weather in complicity, we sinned over hot chocolate and beignets at Café du Monde and I quickly learned that breathing is … Read more >>

An exclusive peek of Stormfield, Twain’s last home

Mark Twain lived his last years at Stormfield, an isolated Italianate villa in Redding, Conn. Twain bought the expansive property sight unseen and asked not to be saddled with the construction plans. All he wanted was … Read more >>

Diversity: A Blind Spot in College History?

As a graduate of Haverford College in 1963, when the student body of 450 was all male and virtually all white (James B. MacRae Jr., was the only black student in our class), I was curious … Read more >>

Would Mark Twain have tweaked the Paul Revere House restoration?

Mark Twain mocked New Englanders’ reverence for their early ancestors and symbols of those ancestors. He jokingly suggested that they disband their New England societies and “get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock!” One can … Read more >>