THE WEIGHTINESS OF A CONNECTICUT YANKEE.

THE WEIGHTINESS OF A CONNECTICUT YANKEE. John Sutherland also dismisses THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER and A CONNECTICUT YANKEE. They are “charming amusettes (to borrow Henry James’s term) but no one suggests they are in the MOBY DICK class.” Both books deal with major historical issues, but let me just argue on behalf of A CONNECTICUT YANKEE. In the years since it was written, economic historians in general have given increasing importance to technological change and to cultural attitudes in explaining economic growth. Twain wrote about technological change at a time when “Yankee ingenuity” was changing the world through sewing machines, the telegraph, mechanical reapers, the electric light bulb, the telephone…. In a few years after A CONNECTICUT YANKEE was written, two bicycle mechanics would invent the airplane. Twain contrasted the Yankee attitude with the underlying assumptions of hundreds of years of monarchy and aristocracy. A critic may dislike the book for other reasons, but I think it is incorrect to dismiss it as an amusing trifle.