Opening a series dubbed Life and Legacies, Ziff weighs Twain's literary achievements more than either relating his life or arguing his legacy. "Celebrity," the first of four chapters, most closely approximates biography by focusing on how Twain parlayed the phenomenal success of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" into a lucrative career as a journalist, lecturer, and publisher of books by subscription. Here Ziff broaches the issue of Twain's feelings of inferiority about his literary capabilities, which persisted throughout his life, though he answered his critics very well. Here also Ziff begins the literary analysis that distinguishes the book by comparing Twain's storytelling style with that of the early-nineteenth-century southwestern humorists, in whose footsteps he followed. The other chapters take up Twain as travel writer, novelist, and humorist, respectively. Ziff is perspicacious throughout, never more so than in assessing Twain's greatest gift to subsequent literature--his humor, in which comic effects arise out of how something is said rather than its content.