Publisher's Synopsis
Mark Twain is probably best known for his novels "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and "The Prince and the Pauper" as well as his travel books "Life on the Mississippi," "Roughing It," and "The Innocents Abroad." Twain was a prolific writer, though, and besides his many other novels and full-length nonfiction works, he also produced vast amounts of other types of works, bequeathing to readers many dozens of sketches and short stories (and this is without even more than mentioning his correspondence, speeches, essays, and his far-and-wide-ranging autobiography). This collection contains the best (or "superbest") of his sketches and short stories. Many are fictional stories (albeit often rooted in fact and actual occurrences), and many are "his take" (usually humorous) on various things - you can think of them as colorful op-ed pieces. The selection of what to include and what to leave out was made by one person; it must be admitted that each person has their own taste and opinion, and no two people would arrive at the same conclusion as to which sketches and stories should be squeezed into this necessarily abbreviated volume, and which ones would have been better left out of it in favor of another. The sketches and short stories appear in chronological order, from The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, written in 1867, to The Turning-Point of My Life written in 1910. Mark Twain
