The Americans is no self-help book, no guide to suburban living. Rather, [it] offers all of us a chance to examine the places we make our homes, to remember what these places might mean in the context of American history, and to consider how they might shape American culture.
In the New Yorker, Ben Tarnoff reviews Volume II of the Autobiography of Mark Twain. Notorious for his ability to talk a blue streak, Twain dictated the entire three-volume tome…