Showing results by author "Mark Twain" in All Categories

"I'd rather be lucky than good". Mark Twain relates the story of a decorated British general who throughout his career moved through the ranks by luck. According to Twain's informant, this guy is a total nincompoop, but lucky.

An essay in which Mark Twain destroys the pretensions of the interpretation of divine will in the world. He argues against the apparent ease and certainty of interpreting divine communications.

Mark Twain’s essay "The Bee" has a comical twist. It deals with the natural pressure on one bee assure that her colony survives. "After the queen, the next bee in importance to the hive is the virgin. All work is done by them. The males do not work, the queen does no work, unless laying eggs is work."

Mark Twain's masterpiece of juvenile literature, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Published by Theo Holland.

A Tramp Abroad (1880) by Mark Twain is a travel journal which includes autobiography and fictional events. The book chronicles a journey by the author and his friend Harris through central and southern Europe. The two men make their way through Germany, Switzerland, eastern France, and Italy, encountering situations that become more humorous by their reactions to them. The narrator plays the part of the American tourist, believing that he understands all that he sees but in reality understanding none of it.

Mark Twain wrote and had opinions about many things, including religion and Biblical matters. This selection of sketches compiled from Europe and Elsewhere is fun and insightful.

A Scrap of Curious History is an essay by Mark Twain dealing with the fictional history of abolitionism in a Missouri town. It was originally published as part of the What Is Man? And Other Essays collection.

Europe and Elsewhere is a collection of Mark Twain's short stories and essays published in 1923. It is a must-listen for any Samuel Langhorn Clemens aficionado.

Mark Twain’s essay, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness", was published in the North American Review in 1901. This dark satire exposes the imperialism behind the Chinese Boxer Uprising, the Boer War, and the Philippine-American War. In this, Twain's most famous anti-imperialist work, he indicts the brutalities of the British, French, German, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and American governments for their actions around the world. He also attacks the imperialist greed of missionaries like William Scott Ament, then-head of the American Board for Foreign Missions.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American classic, a book that has inspired troves of writers in its wake, and that has sparked generations of discussion and debate. It is noted for its depiction of people and locations along the Mississippi River. One of the first major American novels to employ vernacular English, Adventure of Huckleberry Finn offers a satire on Southern Antebelleum society, particularly regarding attitudes of racism. Told in the first person by protagonist Huckleberry Finn, the book is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a uniquely American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called "The Great American Novel". We know the work but what about the great man behind it? In this well-told audiobook, Twain speaks about particulars of his turbulent life and times. A must-have addition to all university and school systems.

William Howells was a friend of Mark Twain’s for 44 years and spent many hours in the company of this giant of late 19th century American literature. Clements’s views on slavery, literature, religion, and many sketches of home and family life emerge in this account of a truly great man.

While Mark Twain was visiting Austria, Empress Elisabeth travelled to Geneva, where she was killed by an anarchist. Mark Twain, who had known the Empress, was shocked and outraged. This essay includes a description of the funeral and Twain’s thoughts about the assassin’s mind.

This essay by Mark Twain is an amusing portrait of pupils through actual exam answers. Twain blamed the situation on the education system.

"What Is Man?", the 1906 essay by Mark Twain, is a dialogue between a young man and an older man involving ideas of destiny, free will, and egoism. The old man asserts that the human being is merely a machine, but the young man objects and asks him to go into particulars and provide the reasons for his attitude.

Mark Twain attended the performance of operas like Parsifal at Bayreuth. He enjoyed the instrumental parts but didn’t like the singing, as he recounts in a humorous way. He called it "the wailing, screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy".

This is Mark Twain's passionate eulogy for his eldest daughter, who died from spinal meningitis aged 24. It provides an intimate portrait of his daughter and attempts to present what he experienced as her unique character.

In this short essay, Mark Twain discusses the patriot William Tell, the city of Interlaken, and the Jungfrau mountain. He describes the beauty of the landscape with great admiration.

Twain describes how he and his friend, Joe Twichell, tried to learn how to ride a bicycle in May of 1884. The bicycle was a new invention, and it proved to be more difficult than riding a horse. According to Twain, it was a painful and short-lived experience.

Con su estilo sencillo, directo, ácido e irreverente, Mark Twain nos da una divertida a la vez que placentera e ingeniosa versión sobre los habitantes del Paraíso Terrenal. Intenta penetrar en la mente de los que presuntamente fueron nuestros primeros padres y nos hace verlos en su ingenuidad, en su mirada de descubrimiento de todo lo que les rodea, incluyéndose a ellos mismos (el “experimento semejante a un reptil” que mira Eva y “la nueva criatura de pelo largo” que ve Adán).