Mark Twain: The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It (Library of America)

• Hardcover - 01 December, 1984 - Library of America
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• By: Mark Twain, Guy Cardwell and Mark Roughing It Twain
• ISBN: 0940450259

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Reviews by readers

Irreverent and satiric - traveler Twain

The great humor and satirical power of Mark Twain are evident often in this work. As his ability at precise observation and understanding. His account of the 'Holy Land'as wasteland is still one of the best descriptions ever given about the Middle East.
There are passages wich will seem out- of- date. And material that perhaps should have been junked.But on the whole this is a very amusing and perceptive traveler.

One of the funniest books ever written

When I read Chapter 13 of this book where he describes the scene in Paris where 'Ferguson' is eating his breakfast and generally ripping them off as he pretends to guide them to the Louvre I had to put the book down because I was giggling and laughing so hard. Even now when I reread it for the 100th time it never gets old. Anyone who feels Twain was racist doesn't get how universally he applies his satire.

A Travel Book from 1869 That's Worth Reading Today

Reading early Mark Twain is like watching a young David Letterman. The brilliance is there, but its owner is still learning how to use it. In 1867, Twain was dispatched by a San Francisco newspaper to be a passenger on the first organized tour group of Americans making their way through Europe and the Near East. In 1869, he reworked his newspaper dispatches into something resembling a book, although that book is more like Gulliver's Travels than Moby-Dick. Twain's modern detractors don't approve of how he wrote so dismissively about "the natives." What they overlook is that he is even more cutting when he is writing about the pious, provincial Americans he is traveling with. The Innocents Abroad is one of the first books that grapples with what it means to be an American. And it's a lot more fun to read than Henry James.

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