The Innocents Abroad (Signet Classics) - Softcover

Twain, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451530497 ISBN 13: 9780451530493

Publisher: Signet, 2007

Synopsis

One of the most famous travel books ever written by an American, The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain’s irreverent and incisive commentary on nineteenth century Americans encountering the Old World.

Come along for the ride as Twain and his unsuspecting travel companions visit the Azores, Tangiers, Paris, Rome, the Vatican, Genoa, Gibraltar, Odessa, Constantinople, Cairo, the Holy Land and other locales renowned in history. No person or place is safe from Twain’s sharp wit as it impales both the conservative and the liberal, the Old World and the New. He uses these contrasts to “find out who we as Americans are,” notes Leslie A. Fiedler. But his travelogue demonstrates that, in our attempt to understand ourselves, we must first find out what we are not.
 
With an Introduction Michael Meyer and an Afterword by Leslie A. Fiedler

About this title

From the Publisher

14 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap

The Innocents Abroad is one of the most prominent and influential travel books ever written about Europe and the Holy Land. In it, the collision of the American "New Barbarians" and the European "Old World" provides much comic fodder for Mark Twain--and a remarkably perceptive lens on the human condition. Gleefully skewering the ethos of American tourism in Europe, Twain's lively satire ultimately reveals just what it is that defines cultural identity. As Twain himself points out, "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." And Jane Jacobs observes in her Introduction, "If the reader is American, he may also find himself on a tour of his own psyche."

About this edition

• Publisher: Signet
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0451530497
• ISBN 13: 9780451530493
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 560