The Innocents Abroad

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