Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.403
EAN num: 9780060144289
Format: Abridged
ISBN number: 0060144289
Label: Harpercollins
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 319
Printing Date: 1977-09
Publishing house: Harpercollins
Sale Popularity Level: 2945912
Studio: Harpercollins
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Twain's account of traveling in Europe, A Tramp Abroad (1880) sparkles with the author's shrewd observations and highly opinionated comments on Old World culture, and showcases his unparalleled ability to integrate humorous sketches, autobiographical tidbits, and historical anecdotes in a consistently entertaining narrative. Cast in the form of a walking tour through Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy, A Tramp Abroad includes among its adventures a voyage by raft down the Neckar and an ascent of Mont Blanc by telescope, as well as the author's attempts to study Art -- a wholly imagined activity Twain 'authenticated' with his own wonderfully primitive pictures included in this volume.
Amazon.com Review:
Nearly nine decades after his death, Mark Twain remains an international icon. His white-maned, mustachioed image is instantly identifiable throughout the world, the very picture of probity and high spirits (which explains why he's become the poster boy for products as diverse as beer, billiard tables, sewing machines, pizza, and real estate). Perhaps more importantly, Twain's books have retained all their power to amuse and enrage. How is it possible for the creator of a 19th-century 'boy's holiday book' (Twain's own description of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) to raise so many contemporary hackles? The answer is that Twain is a contemporary writer. Not, of course, from a chronological point of view--he was born in Missouri in 1835 and died in 1910 (having insisted that 'annihilation has no terrors for me'). But Twain was the very first writer to elevate the American vernacular to a high art. Sidestepping the starched-shirt diction of his peers, he created an idiom that resembled (but did not precisely duplicate) the wayward, slangy, ungrammatical music of American conversation. No serious reader of Twain will want to do without the Oxford Mark Twain. This 29-volume leviathan includes not only the major works but also a treasure trove of essays and short pieces, many of them unavailable for decades. Throw in the introductions to each volume (by such heavyweights as Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, Cynthia Ozick, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Walter Mosley), as well as the original illustrations, and you've got the book bargain of the millennium.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
When Twain is funny, he is laugh-out-loud, read-it-out loud funny. When he isn't, he's obscure, topical, or dated. He's usually funny in an unmistakable style that you could identify as Twain with your eyes closed (I.e. without being told who wrote it)!
Rated by buyers 
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I listened to the audio version of both books, and will admit up front that the narrator for this one is not one of my favorites, but I got past that after a while.
Twain seemed to be "padding" the narrative with an awful lot of folktales and legend, rather than his own experience. There's a lengthy (and highly annoying) "fantasy" sequence - I suppose he was trying for parody - as well. I found myself fast-forwarding through almost a full cassette of a gory description of two deuls (near the beginning); he delights in recounting grisly mountaineering stories later on during the novel. The storyline ended abruptly at the end of cassette 11 of 13; the last two were the appendix, which I skipped.
I really liked "Innocents" and am planning on purchasing "Following the Equator" (I looked through it at a bookstore and it seemed pretty interesting), but I wish I'd skipped this one. Three stars for the humour when he actually describes his own experiences.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a single book, not the whole set and the book is in less then usable quality. The seller was to send return address materials and has not as of 12/19.
Rated by buyers 
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It's fascinating to compare my own experiences, having lived now 3 years in Germany, to those of an American from 125 years earlier. I've been learning to speak German, and his Appendix on the "awful" German language was hilarious. In poking fun at German grammar (e.g., long sentences), he purposely commits the same errors in his own writing. The scene "riding" the glacier down the Alps was so funny I had tears running down my face. It's amazing to think that it was written in 1879, when America was barely a century old, and the insights and perceptions then can be incredibly, eerily similar to either my or "typical" American's attitudes today.
I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly to anyone visiting or living in Europe. It's way funnier than his "Innocents Abroad", which is also a good read on travel in Europe.
Rated by buyers -
A Tramp Abroad is the third and least successful of the travel books written by the pen of Mark Twain.
In this book we follow Twain as he tours Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland. I found the early chapters chronicling his visit to Heidelburg University; hilarious visits to opera houses and tale tales such as the Blue Jay yarn to be well done.
The longest section of the book deals with Twain's alpine climbing adventures in Switzerland. This material is interesting but goes on a bit too long for the modern reader.
This is a fine book and deserves to be read and enjoyed by a wider readership that better known but lesser Twain novels and
travel writing,
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys listening to a great author recount his peregrinations through Europe in a leisurely and informative manner.
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