Ben Tarnoff
Ben Tarnoff is the author of A Counterfeiter’s Paradise: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Early American Moneymakers and The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature.
All Writing
Essay
The Future
Magical Thinking
Ben TarnoffEdward Bellamy’s Looking Backward presented a twentieth century that was free of nineteenth-century... More
Essay
Comedy
Once Upon a Time in the West
Ben TarnoffHow a simple story of a man and his talented frog made Mark Twain a national celebrity. More
Roundtable
“As for Me, I Sell Abuse”
At first glance, Ambrose Bierce didn’t look like a coldblooded verbal killer. He was tall and handsome and scrupulously groomed, with a cherubic mop of golden hair. He excelled as a conversationalist and womanizer. He was also was nineteenth-century America’s greatest insult artist. More
Roundtable
The Worst Business in the World
Everyday is doomsday if you ask certain people about the future of publishing. But the history of bookselling proves it is more adaptive than its critics give it credit for. More
