Cartoon by Mike Twohy. For more: http://nyr.kr/QKqrIp

Cartoon by Paul Noth. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/TTAMi6

I took a spin through the archives and—lo and behold, I discovered something quite fascinating: today, even the richest among us do not eat Thanksgiving like the rich of 1900. 

Click-through to read Macy Halford on the time Mark Twain tried to move Thanksgiving, and for more on Thanksgiving menus in 1900.

Group portrait at Mark Twain’s seventieth-birthday party.

There are several indicators one might use to judge the level of one’s fame. One is being the highest-paid writer in the history of the world. Another is not being dissuaded by anyone from writing over two thousand pages of autobiography. And another is feeling comfortable asking the President of the United States to move Thanksgiving for your birthday celebration…

Macy Halford on the time Mark Twain tried to move Thanksgiving.

And, for those who are interested, see the menu from Twain’s seventieth-birthday bash.

I guess it’s my fault for assuming I was anything more than a glorified dipping sauce to you people….

Shouts & Murmurs -  The Cranberry Sauce has Something to Say: http://nyr.kr/UeICn5

Photograph by Lew Robertson/Getty.

Adam Gopnik on turkeys and Thanksgiving in America. Continue reading.

Cartoon by Bob Eckstein. For more: http://nyr.kr/T7z5gt

“Thanksgiving is not easy,” Sam Sifton warns turkey tyros in his new book “Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well.” Handily enough, Sifton, who was the restaurant critic at the Times for two years before becoming the paper’s National Editor in 2011 (food + America = Thanksgiving expertise), has produced “a primer on how to face down the Thanksgiving meal… a Thanksgiving ambulance in book form.” With a quarter century of Thanksgivings at the stove—“I have seen a lot of birds”—and experience manning the Times’s holiday hotline, he boasts, “I can help.”

Emma Allen valiantly attempts to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with the help of Sam Sifton’s stern advice: http://nyr.kr/Xif4dC

Don Bosco Prep

This week, Ben McGrath writes about the high-school football legacy at Don Bosco Prep, in Ramsey, New Jersey. We sent the photographer Brian Finke, who had photographed the Ironmen nine years prior, back to the field, to capture the team at practice and at a Thanksgiving Day game against St. Joe’s, one of their main rivals. “There is something so wonderful about being at a high-school football game on Thanksgiving,” Finke said. “The fall leaves, the maroon uniforms, the painted fans who know they are watching some of the best high-school football in the country.” Click through for more of Finke’s photos of the team: http://nyr.kr/rwTkmA

A leftovers cartoon by Liza Donnelly (2007)