Customer Reviews

A Tramp Abroad

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book, at $18.95 + shipping, was printed the same day I ordered it. (The back page contains a barcode & printing date.) It is "published" so amateurishly as to make it practically unreadable--unless, that is, you consider a computer printout as readable as an actual book.

In my view, something not professionally typeset & bound & designed by a professional press does not actually even constitute a book, so Amazon carrying this item amounts to fraud. This vendor calling itself 'CreateSpace' publishing is taking public domain texts & mass printing & fake binding them at a hefty profit. Look closely at the cover & font, and you will see that this is true. Please don't get taken like I did. When I finally picked it up three months later to start reading it, I realized, to severe chagrin, that I had been cheated. I hope that's not repeated for others.

'Mark Twain' proves that travel writing and humorous annectdote do go together. Time has proved that Twain's writing ages well. I travel in Europe each year and have visited many of the places Twain writes about in 'A Tramp Abroad.' It is 'all here:' the talkative lonely American you can't get rid of, the classy hotels and the small inns, the big plans and lesser accomplishments, shopping for kitsch, the amazingly knowlegible concierges and porters, complaints about 'foreign food' and the splendid scenery and architecture. Twain applies irony and exaggeration in recounting his travels during the last years of the 19th Century and he lards his account with the occaisional American folk humor that was his 'bread and butter.' There are almost 350 pages of text in this edition, including appendices on his frustration with foreign language and a number of other topics. Of course, one day can get to seem much like another on a tour and the challenge in writing a book such as this is to somehow make each similiar experience fresh. Mostly, Mark Twain succeeds. This is a book to savor over several nights or to intersperse with other reading.

This book was produced by a printer whose main concern was to save paper. There isn't even a table of contents! Still, compared with other books I've bought from Amazon, the price was hefty, so this was a shock.