Roy Morris
Local author Roy Morris Jr. has published his eighth book, American Vandal: Mark Twain Abroad, concerning the famous writer’s many years living and traveling abroad. The book focuses on the dozen years that Twain spent living overseas, and on the three popular travel books—The Innocents Abroad, A Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator—he wrote about his globe-trotting adventures.
During his years abroad, Twain progressed from a neophyte “American Vandal” to an internationally-known celebrity who dined with the German Kaiser, traded quips with the king of England, gossiped with the emperor of Austria and negotiated with the president of Transvaal for the release of American war prisoners.
Like his own country at the end of the 19th Century, Twain gradually assumed a prominent place on the world stage, and American Vandal details the always rollicking—and sometimes rocky—collision between Twain and the various foreigners he encountered on his travels.
“Only an accomplished storyteller should dare to take up the life of our most revered raconteur,” says Twain scholar Lawrence Howe, “and Morris measures up. There is no shortage of Twain biographies; one as well researched and well told as this one deserves to be among them.” And James Leonard, editor of the Mark Twain Journal, notes: “American Vandal gives readers a fresh view of Mark Twain while casting a revealing light on American identity.”
Mr. Morris, a former newspaper reporter for the Chattanooga Times and the Chattanooga News-Free Press, is the editor of Civil War Quarterly magazine and the author of seven previous books on the Civil War and post-Civil War eras, including Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan; Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company; The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War; Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876; The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln’s Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America; Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain; and Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America.
Mr. Morris resides in North Chattanooga with his wife, Leslie, the director of Northside Learning Center.
American Vandal: Mark Twain Abroad is published by Harvard University Press and is available at Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million and online at Amazon.com.