Roughing It by Mark Twain
I have a new featured book for you this week. This one is an American classic called Roughing It by Mark Twain. It is one of Mark Twain’s travel books which made him famous as an author. In this book he writes about his travels throughout the Old American West, his adventures with mining, newspaper editing and with the rough folk of the Old West. Of course, he fictionalizes it quite a bit, but that adds to the entertainment value.
What I find most interesting about this book is the way in which Twain portrays the Old West. He was a contemporary who actually did spend several years in the Old ‘Wild’ West and, although his account is fictionalized to some degree, it still shows us how people who lived during that era saw the west or at least wanted to see the west as compared to today’s highly romanticized image of it.
