The Tarnished Age

摘要

Mark Twain published The Gilded Age, his tour of unbridled avarice and unchecked political corruption, 145 years ago. A central character in the novel is a young woman who fashions herself as a Washington lobbyist to promote her family's financial interests. Her efforts anchor a satirical, caustic work that defined an era and was laced with pointed warnings that are still relevant today. "No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only machinery for its execution, nothing more," Twain wrote.