About this title: This comic narrative is based on Twain's six years of "variegated vagabonding" in the American West at the height of silver-mining fever. Twain's naive narrator, after immersion in the rough and practical American West, becomes educated in the ways of the world. Twain's perennial theme of the outsider trying to fit into a society that is alien to him is articulated for the first time in this 1872 book.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: New American Library, New York
Date Published: 1962
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 1962 Signet paperback. NOT EX LIB! Clean, lightly toned pages with light reading wear, name inked out inside front cover, gently creased spine, some edgewear & cover scuffing. 448 p. Glued binding. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Signet Classics
Date Published: 1962
ISBN-13:9780451524072ISBN:0451524071
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Ex-library. INK. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 448 p. Signet Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: New American Library
Date Published: 1962
ISBN-13:9780451524072ISBN:0451524071
Description: Good. Good Condition. Reasonable wear. Still very usable. Clean, mark-free interior! MMP SHIPS W/IN 24 HOURS! FREE INSURANCE on all orders! E-mail notification! Careful, thorough packaging. Fast, personal service. No hassle, full refund return policy! COMBINE SHIPPING-TENS OF THOUSANDS OF OTHER BOOKS/CDs/MOVIES AVAILABLE! read more
Description: Good. Dust Cover Missing. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"As any kid with a Missouri education, I'd had plenty of exposure to Twain, but it had always been his more well-known fiction (Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn) that we'd read in class. This book, a nonfiction account of Clemens' trip west with his brother, is decidedly different. Twain was in Nevada during the great silver mining rush, and in San Francisco during one of its biggest earthquakes. He discusses his visits with the Mormon community in Salt Lake City, his newspaper-editor days in the Nevada mining town of Virginia City, his visit to the Solomon Islands (Hawaii) as guest correspondent for a San Francisco newspaper, his experience as a vagrant on the streets of San Francisco, and his scheme to make his living as a lecturer in that city's theaters."
"Another book I chose to read while on our California trip. Roughing It is an account of Twain's life in the West. Twain travels with his brother to California and Nevada during the time of the Gold Rush. Twain looks for silver, has run-ins with bad guys, and observes the West in its early days with humor and cleverness. Lots of politically incorrectness that probably struck the readers of the day as hilariously funny."
"I read most of this book about a dozen years ago in college, and while I enjoyed it, I read it with too much of an academic eye and with too much reverence for Mr. Twain, who probably would have scorned such a development. This time around I enjoyed it far more as straight entertainment, though, having been to far more places in the American West than at the time of my first reading I also appreciated it much more as a travelogue.
Twain's digressions are so numerous in Roughing It that about two thirds of the way into it he apologizes for them - before launching into another digression. It has the effect of creating a literary rope-a-dope, as I often felt myself wanting to skip the particular chapter I was reading to move ahead, only to find myself quickly pulled into the chapter that it was usually over before I could contemplate it further.
I suggested a book to a friend who told me she thought it would make for great listening as a book on tape, I think she might be on to something."
"The good, bad and ugly, all wrapped into one. I loved about a quarter of this book, liked another quarter, and yawned through the rest. The parts about Hawaii seem especially forced, like something by a hired-gun travel writer.
But the good parts make this very much worth reading. I mean, we have here a first-hand account traveling the American frontier by stagecoach. We have Twain getting his feet wet as a writer. The politics and culture of Nevada silver mining, again first-hand. This genius of a writer recalling the details of everyday life during one of the coolest periods in American history -- it doesn't get any better than that.
All that, and a page-long sentence with more semicolons than I want to count!
But there's just too much padding, too many boring parts."
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