The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 is being published this month, following on the heels of Volume 1, which became an immediate bestseller in 2010. (Twain required that this work be kept private until 100 years after this death. It will be capped by a third volume.) But don’t look for the trappings of a traditional autobiography anywhere in this mammoth book. It consists of unvarnished dictations that Twain produced from April 1906 through February 1907. Twain is frequently sad and cynical in these late-in-life writings (just a few years before his death) but his devastating wit and sharp-eyed commentary are on full display as well. You can read the Monitor's full review of "The Autobiography of Mark Twain" here.
Mark Sappenfield
Editor
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
