Books by Roy Morris

Toklas-the true power behind the throne.

This is a biography of Ambrose Bierce who discovered in the Civil War a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next 50 years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals.

"This is a collection of true stories about the characters and personalities of the folks I met, worked with and fought with while in the Marine Corps from the mid-1960's to the early-1980's. There were good guys and villains, heroes and heels. The Best of the Best served right alongside the Worst of the Worst. Read about the challenges of boot camp, advanced infantry training and general military subjects school; the loneliness, heartache and horror of service in Viet-Nam and the subsequent nightmares that haunt the sleep of veterans for decades after returning to the real world; surviving the administrative sabotage practiced in the junior enlisted ranks; the politics and intricacies of getting along in the senior enlisted ranks; the frustrations and satisfactions of leadership at the platoon level; the willing praise from senior officers who gladly gave credit where credit was due; and the character assassination attempts and backstabbing methods of senior officers who were almost psychotically jealous of junior officers who possessed superior talents and abilities. This was real life in the Marine Corps, raw, open and unadorned, back in the good old days when survival meant simply that, sometimes, the good guys didn't win, didn't get the girl and didn't ride off into the sunset. And, despite all the excitement, adventure and romance, not all stories had a happy ending."--

This is a collection of stories about the Morris family, our loved ones, friends and neighbors. It covers six decades of our efforts to survive, from growing up dirt poor to going out into the world seeking fame and fortune, then returning to our roots. We didn''t find what we sought but we had adventures, misadventures and excitement galore.Lessons learned in childhood taught us to face each challenge with determination, perseverance, daring, a sense of humor and a will not only to survive but to succeed relying on ingenuity, skill, a strong work ethic, faith and luck.

Arriving at the port of New York in 1882, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde quipped he had "e;nothing to declare but my genius."e; But as this sparkling narrative reveals, Wilde was, rarely for him, underselling himself. A chronicle of his sensational eleven-month speaking tour of America, Declaring His Genius offers an indelible portrait of both Oscar Wilde and the Gilded Age. Neither Wilde nor America would ever be the same.

Unintimidated by Old World sophistication or travel to undeveloped parts of the globe, Mark Twain spent a surprising amount of time outside the continental United States. Roy Morris, Jr. focuses on the dozen years he lived overseas and the books he wrote encouraging middle-class Americans to follow him around the world, at the dawn of mass tourism.

The first full account of Whitman's Civil War years sheds new light on the man, his poetry, and the treatment of the war's sick and wounded.