Author! Author!

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. While searching the University of California libraries  via the Internet Archive, I come across a digitalized  copy of...... "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Sure, I had hear of it before, but had never read it. The snippet was only 14 pages lon...

1835-1910 Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He is called  the "greatest humorist the United States has ever produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature" Mark   Twain  is a pen  name , his  real   name  was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. " Mark " " Twain " is a riverboat term for measuring two fathoms (12 feet):  mark  (measure)  twain  (two). This can be explained by understanding that Clemens was a riverboat operator on the Mississippi before his writing career.  

  1867-1950 Ever hear of Si Stebbins? Same Here! I come across this and borrowed a copy from  The Library Of The University Of California. He was quite a card (no pun intended) back in his day. When I searched up "Si Stebbins History" Wikipedia said: The Si Stebbins stack is a cyclic mathematical card stack. It was popularized by the magician Si Stebbins, and can be constructed from a standard 52-card deck. Frequently used in card magic, its properties allow the position and value of each card in a deck to be determined.