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Born Dwayne Carter Jr. and raised in Hollygrove, a New Orleans neighborhood famous for producing soul singers, Wayne signed his first deal at age 11 after rhyming on a record executive's answering machine. At 12, he distinguished himself by starring as the Tin Man in his gifted middle school's production of The Wiz--and by accidentally shooting himself in the chest with a .44-cal. while imitating Travis Bickle in his bedroom. After teenage years that were lost to the comically awful gangsta group Hot Boys (like 'N Sync with shivs), Wayne went solo and undertook a transformation...
...sophisticated because antislavery fiction--some of it by former slaves--had been a staple of the years before the Civil War. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain melded his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story...
Twain himself, of course, joined up on the Southern side. In his justifiably famous 1885 essay The Private History of a Campaign That Failed, he describes how he knocked about from one position on the war to another, evidently following in the footsteps of his buddies. One striking aspect of his tale is the groping inability of any of the several members of his ragtag militia to assign a reason for their struggle. The essay is in that sense better understood as a part of Twain's significant antiwar oeuvre, a category in which, for example, his essay...
...eventually titled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. ("You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted.") It appeared in newspapers all across the country, was received as a whole new kind of hilariousness and made him famous. "At the close of the Civil War, Americans were ready for a good cleansing laugh, untethered to bitter political argument," writes Twain's recent, so far definitive biographer, Ron Powers. And at least in this first moment of his fame, that's what Twain gave them...
...eating - consuming as much as you can, as fast as you can, within a given period of time - is relatively new. According to Major League Eating, the sport's governing body (yes, there is one) the American version of the pastime began in 1916, the year that Nathan's Famous held its first Fourth of July hot dog-eating contest in Coney Island. According to legend, four immigrants competed to determine who was the most patriotic (the Irishman won with...