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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.403
EAN num: 9780451524072
ISBN number: 0451524071
Label: New American Library
Manufacturer: New American Library
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: November 01, 1962
Publishing house: New American Library
Sale Popularity Level: 465987
Studio: New American Library
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
In his youth Mark Twain found himself adrift as a tenderfoot in the Wild West, working in a variety of professions. This is a record, fact and impression, of those early years.
Amazon.com Review:
There is no nicer surprise for a reader than to discover that an acknowledged classic really does deliver the goods. Mark Twain's Roughing It is just such a book. The adventure tale is a delight from start to finish and is just as engrossing yesterday as it was 125 years ago when it very first appeared.
Roughing It tells the true-ish escapades of Twain in the American West. Although he clearly 'speaks with forked tongue,' Roughing It is informative as well as humorous. From stagecoach travel to the etiquette of prospecting, the modern reader gains considerable insight into that much-fictionalized time and place. Do you know about sagebrush, for example? Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner.
Roughing It is informally structured around the narrator's attempts to strike it rich. He meets a motley, colorful crew in the process; many mishaps occur, and it shouldn't surprise you that Twain does not emerge a man of means. But he withstands it all in such a relentless good humour that his misfortune inspires laughter. Roughing It is wonderful entertainment and reminds you how funny the world can be--even its grimmer districts--when you're traveling with the right writer.
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Rated by buyers 
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No need to beat around the sage brush: this book is fantastic. The funny passages are falling-down funny (the story of the coyote, the cat that fell asleep in a mine shaft, getting "lost" in a snow storm, the mad minister in Hawaii -- on and on it goes). But the bulk of the pleasure this book delivers, in my estimate, lies in Twain's brilliant descriptions -- and they're also a good part of the humor. Partly because behind Twain's humour there often seems to lie a sadness -- and at times a touch of cynicism. When he describes beauty, such as the sunrise over a layer of clouds from the top of a volcano in Maui, he forgets himself, and seems happy. If you know some of the places he visits -- silver mining country near Reno, Lake Tahoe, Mona Lake, San Francisco, the Big Island of Hawaii, Oahu -- it's all the more fun, to compare what has changed, and what hasn't. (According to Twain, he helped change some of it, accidentally starting a forest fire on Lake Tahoe.) The book is long, and almost too rich in humour and interesting anecdotes.
Twain begins by promising not to teach his readers anything. Despite his best efforts, quite a few interesting facts -- about silver and gold mining, eruptions at Kilauea, the Hawaiians, the real Old West -- do creep in, and I can't say they make the book any worse.
I listened to this book on CD, which added another dimension to the fun. Twain is brilliant at mimicry, and the reader matches that brilliance by providing distinct voices for each character that perfectly fit how Twain describes him -- the falling-down-angry drunk, the drunk-to-just-the-stage-to-tell-meandering-stories drunk, the ernest minister who talks about turnips and his correspondence with Horace Greeley, the dying vagabond who can't die without repeating Nevada's national anecdote, and so on.
If I can find the taped version (don't see them here), I'll probably get a copy or two to give away as Christmas presents -- a great way to wile the hours away on the road, especially if you're following in Samuel Clemens' meandering footsteps.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is not one that you will sit down and read over a weekend. It is a slow reader, however the chapters are relativly short. There is typical Mark Twain humor, which I love. I wish there was more of his wit in the book. Not my favorite book by him, but for the love of the author, I read on!
Rated by buyers -
The Virginian (Signet Classics)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
When I was reseachering The Shopkeeper, I found two books especially valuable; The Virginian by Owen Wister, and and Roughing it by Mark Twain. Both were written by men who had actually experienced the Wild West very first hand.
Mark Twain is best known for The adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nowadays, most people forget that he also wrote travel memoirs. Roughing It describes his adventures roaming the Old West, with special emphasis on California and Nevada.
Twain, above all, was a humorist and he told tall tales - engagingly. I put this book in a class with Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. Both reveal the good-natured man behind the world-renown accomplishments. Neither may be completely factual, but both give us a peek behind the curtain and entertain us to this day.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper
Rated by buyers -
This is the very first Mark Twain book that I ever read. It is about his "Going West Young man" around the time of the Civil War. If you like travel books this is a classic. America and Americans, people and human nature and Mark Twain's take on the whole bit. If you have never read any of Mark Twain's non-fiction this is a great place to start. I don't really know if America has produced and funnier, more cleaver humorist than this man. If we have I have yet to find him. This book will never die - not as long as there are humans around with a sense of humor.
Rated by buyers -
If you are into stories about the old west, Twain tells it like it was but with a great humorous twist. A great book, really enjoyed it. Wish I had found it years ago, but better late than never.
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