Life on the Mississippi
Twain's memoir of piloting steamboats on the pre-war Mississippi, and returning to a river transformed, the source-world of his great novels.
Part memoir, part history, this book recounts Twain’s apprenticeship as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi before the Civil War, then his return years later to a changed river and country. He captures the vanished craft of piloting, the river towns, and the technology and commerce reshaping them, in prose that shifts between nostalgia and clear-eyed reporting. It is among his most personal works and a key source for the world of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
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