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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Take a Tour of Europe and the Holy Land with Mark Twain the inimitable Missouri traveler, November 7, 2008
Mark Twain is the Lincoln of our literature. Sam Clemens (1835-1910) wrote Huckleberry Finn in 1885 which has been acclaimed as our greatest American novel. Lesser known are his wonderful travelogues: "Roughing It' "Following the Equator"; "Life on the Mississippi and "The Innocents Abroad" published in 1869. This book is worth reading even 140 years after its publication. Twain style is a joy to read for he was a born storyteller and communicates his thoughts well on the page.
Twain was a reporter who joined the six month expedition to Europe and the Middle East on board the steamer "Quaker City." The pleasure tour had
been organized by the famous pastor Henry Ward Beecher (sibling of Harriet Ward Beecher) and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Neither of these notable made the trip citing other obligations.
Twain roomed with a young man from Elmira New York. He would later visit Elmira and meet his friend's sister Olivia. She would become his wife and the mother of the couple's three daughters.
The Innocents Abroad is a long book of 400,000 words covering over 500 densely written pages. Twain takes a sardonic, humorous view of European art as he guides us through the Louvre, Florence Italy and Rome. We visit London, Paris and meet with Czar Alexander II in the Crimea. Twain had a keen reporter's eye and a humorist's ability to paint word pictures of his fellow passengers,tour guides and natives of the fascinating cities and countries he visited on a busy itinerary.
As a Presbyterian pastor I found the most interesting part of the book dealt with Twain's tour of Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and Israel. He was upset by the filth, disease and cruelty he saw in the land of Moses and Jesus Christ. Despite all his asides and digressions the observant reader can gain a good picture of what these places were like in 1869. Twain was an agnostic but knew his Bible.
Mark Twain was our greatest author. In this fine book you will get to know this fascinating man better as he shares his globe trotting journey with his readers.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The funniest book ever written-in the history of time!, November 9, 2001
By A Customer
Ok, maybe that is a minor overstatement, but this is one hilarous book, to be read by people who have travelled, who plan to travel, and generally, people who want to laugh. A lot. The book is also surprising for its timeless points about the journeying of certain upper white, middle class people going on a grand tour of Europe. I frequently had to remind myself that it was written in 1869 because his observations and the behavior of his shipmates is so close to the way people I studied abroad with acted-only a few years ago. Twain also puts those "cosmopolitan" people who claim to have traveled, but don't know anything about any place they have been but and just like to lord it over everyone else that they have "travelled" and you have not. Reading this book is like listening to a very wise, old man tell you about his adventures. Its not like a book, more like one long conversation. Twain takes nothing seriously-not himself, his fellow travelers or the places they visit. The words are another adventure-sometimes, you know he is setting you up for something, other times he is serious for a while, then you end up in the middle of a joke. I know this is against the rules, but the other posters who don't like this book-don't be so serious and p.c. all the time. Twain is making humorous observations, at a time when a different standard was acceptable. Not to mention, he does manage to get a few zingers in there about what people are willing to accept and what they do not. You will laugh yourself silly and want to book a trip-not to Europe, just to anywhere, after reading this book.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Twain's Best, December 16, 2008
The Innocents Abroad covers the travels of the steamer Quaker City and its cargo of American tourists headed on a pilgrimage to the holy land. One thing that you notice right off the bat is that Americans haven't really changed since Twain's time. We still make the same remarks and complain about the same things and are prone to the same bad habits as then.
The funniest parts of this book is when Twain is talking about the paintings of the old masters or about the relics of Europe's churches. Twain likes to give his honest opinion in saying that he enjoys newer painting more than the old faded and cracked paintings of the old masters, and he is sure to torture any tour guide that gets within his grip with the fact. As for the relics, Twain notes that there are enough pieces of the true cross to make several copies over. The skeptic in Twain comes out and he points out everything that he thinks is false or a sham.
The reason that I say this isn't Twain's best is that this was written by a young Twain as a newspaper writer, so in a sense he he writing to appeal to a larger crowd. He takes every opportunity to criticize the people and races that he encounters on his travels. To the modern reader, some of this criticism will read like racial stereotyping, so at times it may be uncomfortable for the modern reader to read. The more tolerant Twain that we often hear quoted doesn't develop until later in his career.
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