Mark Twain

Recounts the adventures of a young boy and an escaped slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.

He was Sam Clemens, steamboat pilot, before he was Mark Twain, famous author. His better-known name originated with the lingo of navigation, and much of his writing was informed by his shipboard adventures on one of the world's great rivers. In this classic of American literature, Twain offers lively recollections ranging from his salad days as a novice pilot to views from the passenger deck in the twilight of the river culture’s heyday. Under the...

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court centers around one of Mark Twain's eccentric fantasies: time traveling. The novel tells the paranormal story of a 19th-century American young man, Hank Morgan, who finds himself amid King Arthur's court in the early medieval times after receiving a blow to the head. By focusing on social injustices and on images of cold-blooded executions and gory feuds, the story generally challenges the idealistic myth

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"I have found out, " Mark Twain once wrote, "that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them." It was a lesson he had actually learned when, as a young journalist, he set sail for Europe and the Holy Land with "the first organized pleasure party ever assembled for a transatlantic voyage."