Rollicking 1873 tale portrays post-Civil War corruption of Washington, D.C. The Gilded Age became synonymous with the era's excesses, and its subtitle — "A Tale of Today" — remains relevant.

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. The term gilded age, commonly given to the era, comes from the title of this book. Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess. Illustrated.