Dan De Quille (1829-1898), who lived in Virginia City, Nevada, for most of his forty-year career, was a nationally recognized author and journalist who along with his friend and colleague Mark Twain helped create a distinctively American brand of humor.  The most talented Far West humorist of his time--he specialized in manufacturing scientific hoaxes--De Quille also superbly recorded the epic personalities and exploits of the first generation of western prospectors and settlers.  In this defninitive anthology, Lawrence Berkove has carefully selected works that reveal anew De Quille's sympathetic yet biting talent, which captured western America in legends, folklore, and unique and enduring humor.
Lawrence Berkove is a professor of English and director of the American Studies Program at the University of Michigan- Dearborn.  He has published widely on American authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, expecially Bierce, Twain and De Quille.