Author: Mark Twain / Year: 1835-1910 / Genre: AutobiographyWhen you dive into Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemens’) The Innocents Abroad, you have to be ready
to learn more about the unadorned, ungilded reality of 19th century “touring” than you might think
you want to learn. This is a tough, literary journey. It was tough for Twain and his fellow “pilgrims”
, both religious and otherwise. They set out, on a June day in 1867, to visit major tourist sites in
Europe and the near east, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, “the Holy Land”, and Egypt.
What Twain records, in often humorous, sometimes grotesque but always fascinating detail, are
the day-to-day ups and downs of discovering the truth about people and places. The truths they
learn are often far different than their education and rumor have made them preconceive.
