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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent read., February 8, 2001
This book, written by Twain and Warner, pokes fun at American society during what they called "the guilded age". This term has stuck and is often used by historians to describe the period 1877-1914. Twain and Warner see this time as one where men care only for money. These men will not work hard, but merely scheme and plot in order to strike it rich. The dialogue in the book is very snappy, the best being when Laura Hawkins arrives in Washington, DC and meets with the other high society ladies. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in United States History, or just those who want to read a good novel. The book can drag at times, but overall is very engrossing.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Greed, February 17, 2004
The post-Civil War years were a time of rapid industrialization in America, aided and abetted by burgeoning plans to build a transcontinental railroad. Many people saw an opportunity to get a piece of the action, to speculate with family savings, the little that there were, in hopes of making millions of dollars in return. Investing in coal mining was one example. It is against this background that _The Gilded Age_ takes place. Many in Congress saw an opportunity to support various projects that were supposedly for the public good, e.g. building a university for the newly freed slaves upon land, located in Tenneesee, bequeathed by a family patriarch to his children. These schemes were also meant to line many people's pockets. The novel's Senator Dilworthy supports various liberal causes and "family values," i.e. Sunday school education, but is also thoroughly corrupt. _The Gilded Age_ is meant to be a morality tale where everyone receives his just deserts: the evil or those just plain greedy are punished, including a vengence seeking young woman deeply wronged by her married lover, and the good and the conscientious are rewarded. While the book occasionally gets bogged down in the scandalous details of this young woman's love life, _The Gilded Age_ is often an interesting, lively and educational glance into the manners of 1870s America.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
those complaining about this edition are reviewing the wrong book, August 28, 2011
Several people here are saying this is just a scanned copy of the book and that it contains only
30-some of what should be 63 chapters. That's not the case with this edition of the book, the Penguin Classics
edition. Apparently they're talking about this edition: The Gilded Age which is a scanned, print
on demand photocopy.
You can use the "look inside this book" feature to see that all 63 chapters are here. Anyone familiar with the Penguin
Classics series knows that they are not scanned photocopies, filled with typos, or missing significant sections of the book.
Just thought I'd let you know that you can disregard the "don't buy this edition!" posts here, because this is not the edition they're actually talking about.
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